


There's Nothing Ironic About Slaying

by sceptick



Category: Glee
Genre: AU, F/F, F/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-14
Updated: 2013-01-14
Packaged: 2017-11-25 13:53:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/639555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sceptick/pseuds/sceptick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p> Rachel's been slaying for years now, and training for even longer. Simply put, she's the best there is, and she'd be the first to tell you it. Unfortunately for her and her friends, there's a new big bad in town, with friends of her own and a vendetta against the Slayer, and she might just be enough to put Rachel in the ground permanently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Glee. This fic was originally posted on lj in May 2012. Many, many thanks to ellydash for doing such a wonderful beta job on it; any remaining errors are my own. 
> 
> Notes on pairings: This fic is, at its heart, a gen fic centered around Rachel and Quinn. I wrote it with the intention of highlighting the femslash-y undertones of their dynamic from canon, so while there is no overt romantic interaction in the fic, it can definitely be read as pre-pre-slash, if you would. Think of it as Buffy and Spike, circa season 2, but with better hair (and singing voices) all around. 
> 
> Also, Finn/Rachel is very much an anti-ship in this. Just fyi.
> 
> Notes on character deaths: If you want to be spoiled for who the deaths are, see notes [here](http://sceptick.livejournal.com/27976.html). They occur previous to the events of this story, however.

 

_Sunday_

It was a still evening in the suburbs of Lima, Ohio. The air was cool and undisturbed by any hint of breeze. The only sounds were the low droning of numerous televisions, and the occasional raucous laughter from some family watching _The Simpsons_. The clean houses with their neat little gardens were wholly peaceful beneath the quarter moon.

In the distance, a hum split the air. It rose, getting closer and closer until it was a dull roar. Finally, with a high screech, the source of the noise peeled around the corner and came into view of the tidy rows of houses.

The school bus tore down the road towards the suburbs, then came to a stop with a final shriek from the brakes. One would think that some well-meaning parent would come out and berate the ruffians in control of the bus, but no one did. The citizens of Lima, Ohio were used to ignoring the things that went bump in the night. The only one who might have risked the darkness outside was at that moment on the other side of the city, having a sleepover with her two best friends.

The doors banged open, and a body tumbled out. She was young, blonde, pretty, and dressed in a red and white cheer uniform. At first it looked like she was simply lying there in the street, staring up at the bus through dull eyes as though wondering why the windows had been painted black. The red splashes of blood, visible only on the white parts of her uniform, and the ashen tint to her skin revealed the truth, though.

A second girl exited the bus. She, like the corpse, was pretty, blonde, and dressed in a uniform, but she walked out, rather than tumbling out tennis-shoes-first, and her uniform was spotless. Her chin was held high and her back was straight as a soldier’s as she stepped over the body, then stopped and scanned the area, sniffing the air discretely. From the way she gritted her teeth, she didn’t like what she’d found.

Two more girls stumbled out the doors, giggling. They, too, wore uniforms, although theirs were as slashed and stained as the dead girl’s. Underneath each slash, however, their skin was smooth and unblemished. That wasn’t the oddest thing about them, though; their foreheads were strangely wrinkled, like a fine shirt left unpressed, and below their creased brows, their eyes gleamed gold. When the shorter of the two opened her mouth in an easy grin, her teeth were visibly pointed.

“That was some sweet driving, Britt-Britt,” she purred, then she pulled her friend in for a kiss. When they separated, their faces looked perfectly human.

“Thanks to you,” Brittany said, smiling slightly as she shrugged. “You’re the wind beneath my wheels, Santana. _Especially_ in this uniform. You’re, like, glowing. In my mind. It’s super hot.”

Santana pressed a kiss to the tip of Brittany’s nose. When she leaned back, she was grinning widely. She said, “Well, it was your genius idea to steal the bus in the first place. The free food and clothes were just our VIP bonus.”

“VIP?” Britt asked.

“Vampires In Pursuit,” Santana said with a smirk. “That’d be pursuit of sweet prey, sweeter parties, and sweetest puss–“

“You sure think you’re funny, Santana,” said the first girl flatly. She didn’t turn around to address them, but the mere sound of her voice made them stop and listen. “Think you’re the world’s best comedian, huh?”

“Listen, Q,” Santana started, spreading her hands innocently, but the first girl cut her off again.

“No, _you_ listen. Take a whiff around you, Santana. Smell anything? There’s a freaking Slayer in town, and you guys are standing around flirting!”

“It’s not Santana’s fault, Quinn,” Brittany murmured, linking her pinky with Santana’s. “I’m totally irresistible.”

Quinn sighed with annoyance. Santana put a hand hesitantly on her shoulder, then said, “So is this a bust, then?”

“No,” Quinn said. “We’re doing the ritual. That Slayer had best just watch her step, that’s all I’m saying.”

 

 

_Monday_

The trouble with vampires, Rachel thought, was that they were always interrupting you at the peak of your performance. They had no appreciation for true talent. It was always “grr grr I’m the greatest” and “die at the hands of the very best” with them.

They weren’t the best. She was.

The brute leveling a punch at her face had jumped her as she’d been nearing the triumphant bridge in her rendition of _The Wizard and I_ , where Elphaba’s voice soars at the thought of achieving her life’s goal. Rachel could empathize on that point – she, too, was a driven young woman with dreams and ambitions. She knew, too, that when she eventually achieved those dreams and ambitions, she’d also likely break into song.

Now, some might’ve said that a graveyard wasn’t the best place for an impromptu performance, but Rachel disagreed. The acoustics were excellent, bizarrely. But even besides that, Rachel believed that practice made perfect, and she applied that philosophy to both of her passions: singing and slaying. There was never a wrong time to practice, not even while on patrol.

Apparently this vamp disagreed.

Rachel spun on her heel, leveling a neat kick at the monster’s chest. It flew back, slamming into a headstone. In an instant she was on it, holding it down with one hand as she raised her stake.

“Maybe next time, you’ll consider showing some manners and waiting until the _end_ of my song before attacking,” she said. “Some applause would be very much appreciated, too.”

“Are you going to kill me or lecture me?” it whined, pausing in its struggles to scowl at her.

“You may consider my methods unorthodox, but I think it’s good for one to recognize the error of one’s ways before one dies,” she said, and flashed it a bright smile, the one she planned on sending towards the press as she imparted some highly-quotable wisdom in the future. She added, “Self-awareness is very important.”

It rolled its eyes, and _really_ , it should have more respect for the person holding a stake above its heart. Rachel’s brightly knit sweaters and her Mary Janes might not have inspired fear in the hearts of Lima’s scum, but her excellence in the art of slaying should.

Oh well, she thought. Some people – some _things_ – wouldn’t recognize talent if it danced the Nutcracker while singing a Celine Dion/Adele mash-up in front of their dull, unsophisticated yellow eyes.

With that thought, she pressed her stake in harder. She leaned in and asked, “What do you know about the deaths of McKinley High’s cheerleading squad?”

“The Cheerios,” Rachel said, digging the stake in until he squirmed beneath her. “This morning, their bus was found abandoned just inside the city limits. All of them were dead, and it looks like vamp work to me. Given my status as Slayer, I have an intimate knowledge of what a vampire’s victim looks like, so it’s almost certain I’m right. Now, do you or don’t you know anything about it?”

The vampire eyed her stake with wide eyes, saying, “This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

“Hmmm.” Rachel considered that, then said, “Thank you for your assistance!” Without any further ado, she slammed her stake down precisely through its heart. It exploded into dust beneath her, and she fell, hard, to the ground.

Grumbling to herself, she stumbled to her feet. She brushed dust from her skirt, scanning the ground for her headband. It had come off sometime during the fight, and she hadn’t had time to recover it, what with all the slashing and growling and stuff. She hoped it hadn’t been crushed in the scuffle; with its bright polka dots, it was one of her favorites.

“Looking for this?” asked a low, friendly voice just over her shoulder. She spun around, fists at the ready, but she broke into a smile when she saw who it was.

“Thank you, Finn,” she said, ducking her head and reaching for the headband. He pulled it away, though. When she glanced up, confused, he leaned over and placed it carefully in her hair. He smiled down at her. When Finn smiled, he smiled with his eyes as well as his mouth. He was so _handsome_ , she thought blissfully.

He pulled his hands away, and she leaned up for a kiss. “Whoa, hey,” he said, stopping her. When she frowned, hurt, he smiled sheepishly and finished, “Cross, Rachel.”

“Right,” she said. She’d forgotten.

That was the thing about Finn. He was so nice and easy-going, you forgot all about the fact that he couldn’t touch crosses, or enter your home without an invite. You forgot that he’d been alive for a couple of hundred years. You forgot he used to drink human blood.

That was all in the past, though. He had a soul, and he loved her. He wasn’t hurting anyone – in fact, he was actively helping with her slaying. He wasn’t like other vamps. He was special, just like she was.

Rachel undid the latch of her necklace and slid it off from around her neck. Once she tucked it into a pocket on her skirt, she got up on her tiptoes and went in for a kiss, and this time he leaned down and met her. It was slow, and deep, and meaningful. Finn’s kisses made her feel like the only girl who mattered.

When they pulled apart, she put on her cross again. ‘Better safe than sorry’ was another one of her philosophies, after all. Even with Finn there, and with her own slayer strength, it was still a good idea to have some extra protection.

Finn wrapped an arm around her waist and led her away from the tombs, towards the graveyard’s gate. It was a possessive gesture, and Rachel wished that the kids at school could see her now. Maybe they’d stop treating her like a loser if they knew what she did and who she was dating. With Finn’s height and his broad shoulders, they might even put away the slushies for once.

When they reached the street, Rachel turned to Finn, taking his hands in her own. “Do you want to, maybe, go grab a coffee or something?” she asked. “Or we could go back to my place. Or yours, I mean, as long as it isn’t a tomb or something. I know a lot of vamps live in tombs, but it seems unsanitary to me –“

“Not tonight, Rachel,” he cut her off. He was staring off into the distance. She’d bet he hadn’t even been listening to her. She glanced away, trying to cover up how much that hurt. It wasn’t not that she was clingy, she told herself. She just expected a little bit more attention from him, now that they were actually dating after a whole year of dancing around one another.

He cupped her chin and lifted her face until she met his eyes. With a small smile, he said, “There’s just more going on right now than you and me, you know,” and she couldn’t help but smile in response. He’d said ‘you and me’ – he thought of them as a unit. She’d never felt so in love, she thought.

“Anything you can tell me about?”

He frowned, shrugging. “I dunno. It’s like – there’s something here. Something dangerous, and I think – I think I know it. I know her,” he corrected himself.

Rachel froze. “Her?”

“Yeah,” Finn said. An unreadable look flashed across his face, at once nostalgic, tortured, and a ton of other things Rachel couldn’t quite understand. “I’m not one hundred percent sure, but it could be. I mean, it’s been ages since I saw her, but...”

“So – so what does this mean?” Rachel asked. She wanted to add ‘for us,’ but she still wasn’t totally sure of what Finn was talking about. An ex-lover of his? An enemy? There was no way she could know, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer, anyway. Besides, _when in doubt, don’t say anything. At all. Seriously,_ her friend Kurt often said to her.

Finn was with her now, she told herself. It didn’t matter if he’d been with hundreds of other women – that was probably all back when he was soulless, anyway. He was a different person now, and he loved her. She didn’t care what this mystery girl had been to him. She didn’t.

“I dunno yet, Rachel,” Finn said. He brushed some hair out of her face with gentle, clumsy fingers, then turned away. As he turned to walk away, he said, “I’ll let you know when I find out.”

“Wait, Finn –“

He spun around, a few steps away, and met her eyes. Rachel felt frozen to the spot, like she couldn’t run to catch up to him if she tried. He said, “Only thing I can say is, my gut’s telling me that if Quinn is in town, we’re probably all screwed.”

Then he was gone, lumbering away into the shadows as she stood under the streetlight like some bereft heroine in an old black-and-white. Glamorous, but lonely.

 

 

_Tuesday_

William McKinley High School was known for having three things: fantastic cheerleaders, abysmal football players, and the highest death rate of any school in Ohio.

Someday, Rachel thought as she flipped through the diary of yet another Watcher’s diary from times of yore, it’d be known for her, too.

From behind her came the sound of someone clearing their throat. When she turned around in her seat, she saw Kurt winding his way through the rows of shelves that comprised the school library’s collection, arms laden with a large pile of books. He held them carefully away from himself, looking down his nose at them.

“Shouldn’t you be the one doing the heavy lifting, Rachel?” he said, raising his eyebrows. He scowled then, and continued, “I don’t think these books have been touched since the Middle Ages. At least not since the invention of the Swiffer. If I get dust on this outfit, I’m never forgiving you.”

“You said you weren’t interested in staring at boring old books, Kurt,” Mercedes reminded him from where she sat across from Rachel. The table between them was covered with the books they’d already read and discarded. Mercedes said, “We thought maybe you’d prefer fetching them, instead.”

“So you’re saying it’s my fault?”

“Yup,” Mercedes said with an easy grin. “Quit your whining, Kurt, you know you can get rid of any dust easy as anything,” and she wiggled her fingers significantly at him. When he rolled his eyes, she laughed, and continued, “Where are you finding all of these, anyway?”

“Principal Figgins’ private collection in the back,” Kurt said. “He has some serious issues, let me tell you. He’s extremely paranoid about vampires, werewolves, the lot.”

“You mean he knows?” Mercedes asked, incredulous.

Rachel interrupted them both. “Of course not, Mercedes, don’t be ridiculous. Don’t you think the authorities would be doing something if they knew? Principal Figgins may be incompetent, miserly, and altogether much too fond of the Cheerios, may they rest in peace, but he’s still the principal. I’m sure he would never risk his students’ safety if he knew of the kind of things that really happened in this school.”

“Touchy, touchy,” Mercedes muttered, turning back to her book with a roll of her eyes. Rachel frowned. Perhaps she’d come on a bit strong.

“Rachel’s right,” Kurt said, smiling bitterly. “Principal Figgins doesn’t even notice the bullying that occurs daily in his own halls. There’s no way he’d notice the _other stuff_.”

They fell into an awkward silence. Rachel felt oddly like apologizing, but she wasn’t sure what she would be apologizing for. Both Mercedes and Kurt were new to her world, after all; although they’d been friends and, often, rivals for the past few years, they’d only found out about her role as the Slayer within the last year. They didn’t seem to understand yet that this was her _life_ , her whole life, and that it was bigger than locker shoves or conspiracy theories about McKinley’s principal. All that was just details, details that would get in the way of her destiny.

Rachel was all about destiny.

Finally, Kurt broke the silence, saying, “Maybe we should get that big, strapping, blond boy who’s been staring at you to help us out, Mercedes. You know, the one on the football team? I’m sure he’d be more than happy to help.”

Mercedes blushed lightly, but she laughed disbelievingly as she said, “Who, Sam? Oh, _please_ , Kurt.”

“Have my instincts ever led you wrong?” Kurt said. “I’m wounded, Mercedes, _wounded_.”

“ _Have your instincts ever_ – you thought he was gay when he first got here, Kurt!”

“I’m revising my initial impression,” he said haughtily.

Rachel smiled at their banter. Okay, she thought, maybe some ‘details’ were acceptable. Sam and Mercedes would make an adorable couple.

Right now, though, wasn’t the best time for them to be discussing Mercedes’s future prospects. It’d been hours since school ended, and they were no further along with the research than when they’d started. If they didn’t get anywhere soon, drastic measures were going to need to be taken, Rachel thought.

She scanned the last page of the diary, detailing the encounter between this Watcher’s Slayer and a vampire named Lucy the Bloody. Lucy, it said, was known for seeking out young mothers, killing them, and turning their children. These children never lasted long – although they had the cruelty of a fully-fledged vampire, they still had the mentality of a child, and often wandered out into the sunlight, unaware of the danger. _Gruesome_ , Rachel thought, shivering. Gruesome but unhelpful. She tossed the diary into the large pile of discarded books and sighed, smoothing down her skirt. She glanced at the clock on the wall: it was already past seven.

Drastic measures, then.

“I think that’s all we can do today,” she said to Kurt and Mercedes. “Thank you both for your help.”

“No need to be so formal, girl,” Mercedes said, stretching gratefully. “You know we’ll do what we can for you.”

Rachel ducked her head, feeling warmed through and through. “Thanks, Mercedes.”

“What’re you going to do, then?” Kurt asked, crossing his arms.

Rachel’s smile drooped. Since they’d pretty much exhausted McKinley’s resources, she was going to have to go to the only source she had left: her dads.

When Rachel was born, a seer out in England had predicted that she would one day wear the Slayer’s mantle. The way her dads told the story -- and they did, every night since she was six and had come home crying from kindergarten because she was _different_ , too well-read and too pushy and too weird -- was that the Slayer’s council had sent them a letter informing them that she would be the next Slayer. It had also said that when the time came she would be assigned a Watcher, but on that point they refused. Some stranger come into their home and teach their precious star? Not likely. They took her training in hand themselves, getting her the best teachers and trainers any girl could ask for. She was going to be the best of the best, they said, and she was.

They’d also received a shipment of books – books that McKinley’s library, Principal Figgins’ paranoia notwithstanding, would not have. This “Quinn” girl might be mentioned in there.

She said as much to Mercedes, who chuckled and said, “Well, you just better hope they don’t ask where you got your tip from.”

Rachel sighed despairingly. “They can’t grasp the depth and beauty of our love. We’re – we’re star-crossed, really. Like Romeo and Juliet,” she said, ending with a dreamy smile.

“Rachel, honey, you do realize they barely knew each other, fell in love based on looks alone, and wound up dead?” Mercedes said, closing her book to eye Rachel warily.

Kurt made a sound that was suspiciously like a chuckle, but when Rachel glared at him it turned into a cough. He shrugged innocently, so she decided she must have simply misheard.

“Well, that’s not like Finn and I at all,” she said, and she pointedly ignored the look Kurt and Mercedes shared. “However, and if you’d let me finish I would have eventually gotten to this after a few stunningly chosen side arguments to add to my main point, Romeo and Juliet, in spite of all you said, do fulfill the ‘star-crossed lovers’ criteria.” She paused, then said with pride, “I made a chart in my grade five English class. My teacher was very impressed.”

“Hmm, I’m sure she was,” Kurt assured her.

“Anyway, despite their faults, Romeo and Juliet fit with the three main points of the chart, just like Finn and I: they were romantic, they were _destined_ ,” and there was that word again, Rachel thought with a smile, “and their parents hated it.”

“The Montagues and the Capulets hated it because of some silly interfamily feud, Rachel,” Kurt said. “Your parents hate it because –“

Mercedes finished for him. “—because Finn _is a vampire_. Remember? The whole blood-sucking, creature of the night thing? Not exactly leading man material.”

“Yeah, just because Brad Pitt can work that doesn’t mean anyone can,” Kurt said. “And Finn is definitely not Brad Pitt. He’s not even Tom Cruise.”

“You didn’t think he was that bad when you first met him, Kurt,” Rachel reminded him, crossing her arms defensively. “As I recall, you were all _over_ him.”

“That was before I found out about the whole blood-sucking, creature of the night thing.”

Rachel narrowed her eyes. “Finn has a soul, remember? Immortality and occasional fangs aside, he’s as human as you or me.”

Kurt stepped in close, and she stood up to narrow the height difference. He was still a bit taller, damn him. Sometimes, the fact that heels, no matter how small, were unfit for Slaying made her want to throw in the proverbial towel. It simply wasn’t _fair_ that she stood so much shorter than everyone else. Couldn’t super-height have come along with super-strength, super-speed, and super-talent?

That said, she wasn’t actually going to throw in the towel. Rachel would rather die than quit. She thought that was one of the best things about her, actually. Right after her wide range of skills, all of which had been honed to the kind of excellence most only dreamed of, and her shining smile.

Kurt interrupted her musings, saying, “Just because someone’s ‘human’ doesn’t make them a decent person. Karofsky has a soul – does that mean that what he did last year was okay?”

“Kurt, that’s a bit of an extreme comparison –“

”I’m just saying, Rachel,” Kurt said. He lifted his chin and, in a voice that implied he was speaking to a less-than-intelligent child, continued, “Just because he’s got some all-powerful soul doesn’t mean you can trust him as totally as you do!”

Rachel drew herself up, clenching her fists. “I don’t know what your problem with Finn is, Kurt. You act like it’s nothing most of the time, like you don’t mind him, but the minute I start sounding too happy you start being absolutely horrible to him. And to me. It’s rude and it’s mean and – I guess I didn’t know you could be so cruel, Kurt.”

Kurt stood there silently for a moment, pale and angry, then he bit out, “I’m just telling you the truth, Rachel. Someone has to.”

Rachel stared up at him, then she turned on her heel and stormed out. She’d rather die before quitting, but she wasn’t above a strategic and furious retreat. As she passed Mercedes, who’d stayed silent throughout the argument, Mercedes gave her a sympathetic look, but she didn’t follow Rachel. No one did.

That was fine, she told herself. Kurt and Mercedes had been friends before she’d joined their group. It was perfectly understandable that Mercedes would go to him. It didn’t mean that he was right.

She made her way through the hallways of her school, shaken but not too worried. She’d always had a somewhat tempestuous relationship with Kurt. They were both dedicated, passionate, and at least a little insane, so sometimes they clashed. They would be fine tomorrow, she was sure.

She swung the front doors open with a bang, as no true storm-off was complete without banging doors. Rachel would never bang _library_ doors, so the doors to the school would have to suffice. With that out of her system, she felt herself beginning to calm down. The night was cool and dark, with a slight breeze that pulled at her hair and skirt. She breathed in, once, down to her diaphragm just like her vocal teachers taught her, and she felt more grounded instantly. She started off down the steps.

As she hit the pavement and started to walk, Rachel became aware of _that_ feeling. The one that started in her spine, a long, low shiver, and then moved outwards until all of her muscles were tense and ready. The one that meant that vampires were near.

She realized with a jolt that she’d left her bag, her bag with her _stakes_ , back in the library. Alone, unarmed, she scanned the nearby area, looking for anything she could use for a weapon. Off to the side, near the dumpster that the football team so often used to terrorize students, there were a few trees. They’d have to do.

Rachel veered off the sidewalk, cutting across the grass towards the trees – towards the wood. She’d only made it a few steps, though, when a body slammed into hers, shoving her down to the ground.

A punch flew in towards her head. Rachel rolled to the left, grabbing the wrist as it went by. She threw her attacker over her with a hard tug, then she was back on her feet in time to slam her heel down in the vampire’s gut.

Her attacker, who she now saw was tall, blonde, and _wearing a bloody Cheerio uniform_ , groaned and curled in on herself. Well, good. The Cheerios might have made Rachel’s life a living hell over the past few years, but they hadn’t deserved to _die_.

Rachel’s only warning of the next attack was a furious growl from behind her. She spun around and came face to face with another girl, also wearing a bloodied uniform. She glared at Rachel with angry yellow eyes. “Hands off, Slayer,” she said, cracking her knuckles. “You do _not_ want to know what kind of nasty tricks I’ve got hidden in this polyester nightmare.”

“Tricks are for the weak and the mediocre,” Rachel said. “A true professional doesn’t need them to shine.”

The vampire made a face, flicking her dark hair out of her face. “If I were a professional, I’d be getting _paid_ for this. I’m in it for the fun. You know, the fun of beating the crap out of you.”

With that, she swung out in a vicious kick. Rachel blocked it easily enough, but it served as a good distraction – the blonde vampire grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms as her friend lunged for Rachel’s feet. She got them, all right, right around the _face_ , and she stumbled back, swearing in poorly accented Spanish.

Rachel thought, sometimes, that if she weren’t the Slayer, she would have been the kind of person who believed in pacifism. She was a vegan, after all, so it was a logical conclusion. She _was_ , however, the Slayer, and violence was in her blood. She rather enjoyed it, honestly. Landing a punch, hearing the crunch of bones, it was – well, it was kind of like the standing ovation that comes after a solo.

So she felt no guilt at all when she slammed her head back into the face of the vampire behind her, and listened for the lovely noises that resulted. The grip on her arms loosened, and she pulled herself free, launching a roundhouse kick immediately that threw the blonde vampire to the ground.

The crack of a twig behind her was her only warning as the other vampire tried again, and Rachel threw up an elbow. It slammed into the vamp’s throat, and she fell back, coughing.

“I’d stay down, if I were you,” Rachel advised them both. “I have a wide repertoire of offensive and defensive moves. I could take you both down again in a heartbeat.”

Her only response was some quiet groans of pain, and then – clapping. From behind her.

Rachel swung around, assuming a defensive position, but no attack came. From around the dumpster came a third girl. Her brow was unwrinkled and her eyes were hazel, but all of Rachel’s senses screamed _vampire_ the moment she appeared. It was obvious in the way she carried herself, chin high and shoulders back like she had nothing to fear in the dark.

Admittedly, it might have been obvious to an observant civilian, too, given the uniform she also wore. Even a ‘normal person’ could pick up on that pattern, Rachel mused.

“Well _done_ ,” the girl said, in a voice that was throaty and cool at the same time. She came to a stop directly in front of Rachel.

Well, she was a vampire, but praise was praise and Rachel would accept it from any corner. “I’m glad _somebody_ can appreciate what a skilled performance that was,” Rachel said pointedly, directing the comment over her shoulder at the two vampires still on the ground.

“Shut up, stubbles,” the girl said, dismissing Rachel with a glance. “I’m not talking to _you_. And that was sarcasm, anyway.”

Rachel glared at her. She hated her already, and that gave her a niggling suspicion of who this might be.

The two vampires dragged themselves up and made their way behind their leader as Rachel watched. The taller blonde one was hanging her head, but the dark-haired one didn’t seem to care much.

“So are you Quinn, then?” Rachel asked, crossing her arms in front of herself.

“I am. And these are Brittany and Santana,” Quinn said, nodding left and right to the other two vamps.

“Well, you may be rude, and the fact that you’d ignore an opportunity to recognize my talent in favor of insulting your – your _minions_ speaks highly of your poor taste, but I appreciate your honesty,” Rachel said. Now she knew who her enemy was. She knew her face. The rest would come easily. “I don’t suppose you’d mind telling me all about your evil plan, too?”

Quinn leveled her gaze at Rachel, meeting her eyes and holding them. Rachel refused to be the first to break away – Quinn might be a vampire, a potential threat to her relationship with her boyfriend, and far prettier than Rachel herself, but she wouldn’t stand down. She clenched her fists and stared until Quinn glanced away.

“I don’t think so, Slayer,” she said, finally. “I think I’ll let you figure it out. I mean, if you can.”

She smirked. Doing that, she didn’t look much different from the teenage girls who took making Rachel’s life miserable and raised it to an art form, Rachel thought. Quinn was probably about her age when she was turned.

It was that thought that got to Rachel. Pushed her into the tiniest amount of pity. She sighed, and said, “Look, Quinn, we don’t have to fight. We’re not so different – we’re both special, we’ve both made some regrettable life choices –“

“Such as?” Quinn interrupted.

“I think you’ll agree that killing the Cheerios was unnecessary,” Rachel said, raising her eyebrows. “It’s not like you needed to feed on a whole _squad_. And I – well, I’ve done some things in the name of competition that others might say were morally questionable. In the heat of the moment they may have seemed like the right choice, I’m sure, and I for one –“

“Oh my God, just get to the point already,” Santana groaned.

“I’m just saying,” Rachel said. “If you were to leave town right now, you’d be out of my – my jurisdiction, I guess. Think, Quinn. We don’t have to do this.”

“A Slayer offering a vampire freedom?” Quinn said, looking at Rachel quizzically. “You really are something else, stubbles. I’m not – I don’t get you.”

Quinn fell silent, and Rachel waited, watching. She didn’t pay much attention to the other vampires, and if her dads were here they would definitely have something to say about that. But when it came down to it, it was obvious that Quinn’s opinion was the only one that mattered. To her girls, and to Rachel.

“You know,” said Quinn, breaking the silence, “if the places were reversed, I would have taken you down. I wouldn’t have even hesitated.”

“I know,” Rachel said, and somehow she did.

“I’m not saying I’m accepting,” Quinn said. “I think we’ll stick around. But I’ll give you a hint: you’re right. That was way more blood than we would have needed. Not quite enough, but it’s a start.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you took something from us, and we’re getting it _back_ ,” said Quinn. She was clenching her fists. “I’m not going to feed you the answers, man hands. And just because I’m giving you a hint? That doesn’t make us friends. I’m angry. I’m _furious_. And I’m here for what’s mine.”

“I don’t understand,” Rachel said, scrabbling for answers. She was lost, completely lost. One second Quinn was being almost friendly and the next, this. Rachel didn’t know how to respond. “W-why would you need blood? I haven’t taken anything from you, I’ve never even _met_ you –“

“That’s what you think,” Quinn said, her voice low, taking a step towards Rachel, “but you’re wrong. God, you are _so_ wrong. And when we raise –“

“Quinn!” Santana interrupted.

Quinn glanced back at her friend, confused, and then realized her slip up. She scowled, turning an angry glare on Rachel, who backed up a step unconsciously. For a second, Quinn looked like she was going to punch Rachel, and Rachel grounded herself, preparing to duck, but then Quinn turned away with a frustrated huff. “Just stay out of my way, Rachel,” she called over her shoulder, “or you’ll regret it.”

“Wait!” Rachel said, rushing after them. A small voice in the back of her head that sounded remarkably like her Dad was screaming ‘ _don’t run after the vampire!’_ but Rachel had never been very good at listening to advice that didn’t come with its own flashing neon lights and booming soundtrack. Maybe if she were, she wouldn’t have shot that ‘Run Joey Run’ video that one time. That was a doomed venture from the start, honestly.

“ _What_?” Quinn snapped, spinning around.

Rachel marched right up to her. “Blood? ‘Raising’? What on earth are you doing, Quinn? And something I’ve taken from you -- I’ll have you know that I consider stealing an unworthy pastime, not to mention morally reprehensible. Frankly, I am hurt and insulted that you’d say such a thing about me. It’s -- it’s practically slander.”

“Libel,” Brittany corrected dreamily.

“Whatever. The point is, this is your last chance to walk away,” Rachel warned. “If not, I’ll -- I’ll have to do something we’ll both regret. You more than me, but still.”

“I was walking away, Slayer,” Quinn growled. “Then you stopped me. But you’re not going to stop this. You took her away from me. From us. There is literally no way you could talk me out of this.”

“Her --” Rachel said, then her eyes went wide. She shook her head. “No. No, you don’t mean -- you _can’t_ mean--”

_You can’t mean the Master._

“Later, stubbles,” Quinn said, and she strode off into the dark, closely followed by Brittany and Santana. Behind her, Rachel stayed, arms slack at her side. She was shaking.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

_Wednesday_

Quinn couldn’t get the Slayer out of her head.

She spent all of Wednesday shut up in the crypt she’d found with Santana and Brittany. They had vanished into the adjacent tomb immediately upon getting back from the confrontation, presumably to lick their wounds and, well... Quinn wasn’t going to finish that thought. The noises, which somehow made it through _stone walls_ , finished it for her.

Quinn passed the time flipping through old yearbooks from McKinley High. That had been their real intention behind going to the school the previous night; running into the Slayer had been a lucky coincidence.

She noticed two things in the yearbooks: the Slayer, whose name was Rachel Berry, it turned out, was in so many clubs that Quinn hated her on principle, and Quinn’s sire must have had some kind of thrall over the principal to get these massive spreads for her Cheerios.

Quinn stared fervently at the pictures of the Master in last year’s yearbook. She was majestic, fierce, and alive. There was a quote at the bottom of the page from her saying, “Cheerleading is like torture. Legal torture. Legal, constitution-approved torture. God bless America.”

When Quinn had first heard, about a year back, that her sire had ditched her old life and gone undercover as a cheerleading coach, in as pathetic a town as Lima of all places, she had laughed herself hoarse. Then she’d been informed that her sire had been killed, and, well, she wasn’t laughing then.

People always said “Don’t shoot the messenger.” She _hadn’t_ shot the demon unfortunate enough to be the bearer of that bad news. What she did to him was a lot messier than a simple bullet to the head. Quinn hadn’t exactly been on speaking terms with the Master -- or, as she’d been calling herself, apparently, ‘Sue Sylvester’ -- for a very long time, not since Quinn had left, but she was still Quinn’s sire.

She turned her focus back to the yearbook in her lap. In the picture, Sue stood on a grassy field, a megaphone clutched in one hand, surrounded by sweating, gorgeous cheerleaders. The sun beat down on her. How exactly had she managed that? Vampires and sunshine were a fatal combination.

Quinn lifted the yearbook up to eye-level, narrowing her eyes. Closer inspection of the photo revealed that the hand holding the megaphone was wearing a ring. Quinn frowned. The Master had never been big on jewelry in the time Quinn had known her. On special occasions, she might have pulled out a chain of pearls, but rings? Not her thing.

It was weird enough that Quinn pulled out one of her old books of lore from the duffel bag she’d brought with her, and flipped through it until she found a match. _The ring of Amara_ , it said. Makes one invincible.

If the Master was invincible, then how did that runty little girl defeat her?

Quinn tossed the book aside and glanced back down to the Master’s page. Once she’d heard of Sue’s death, she’d begun to research the life her sire had created for herself. She’d read about all the trophies Sue had won, and she’d read about how, after her sire’s death, the cheerleading team she’d raised from nothing had gone on to win Nationals again, without her this time. Like none of Sue’s work had meant anything to them. Like they could just leave her behind and make it on their own.

Quinn had hated them. She’d torn their guts out for it. When Quinn brought the Master back, their blood would be the first the Master drank, followed shortly by the blood of absolutely _everyone else_ in this stupid, crappy town.

There was another cry from through the wall, and Quinn growled. “Shut _up_!” she yelled. Her only answer was the sound of Santana cackling.

She couldn’t look at that picture anymore. She flipped past it, and found herself on another one of Rachel Berry’s club photos.

Perfect.

She took her frustration out on the... glee club? Whatever that was. She doodled in a few moustaches, but quickly moved on to adding gruesome, life-threatening injuries to all the members in red pen. The Slayer, in the middle, went untouched.

How had she defeated the Master? She was just a girl, Slayer powers aside. Just a little girl named Rachel Berry, wearing tacky knee socks and animal sweaters, who participated in millions of clubs to make her mark. Clearly kind of desperate. _How had she defeated the Master?_

Quinn sighed, putting her pen down. Defacing a picture wasn’t going to give her all the answers she was looking for. She slammed the yearbook shut and rose to her feet.

As she searched for the jacket she’d brought off that stupid bus, she thought about where she’d go. Before she’d looked at the yearbook, she would have thought to try the bowling alley, or the coffee house in town. They seemed to be the most popular hang-outs in Lima, which really, _really_ said something about how lame this hick town was. But although it had brought her no closer to figuring out how Rachel Berry, of all people, had killed her sire, Quinn thought she had a better grasp on who Rachel was now. A loner, although definitely not by choice. The kind of person who alienated others just by virtue of being herself -- overinvested and overinvolved.

There was no way a person like Rachel Berry would be found in that coffee shop, or that bowling alley. Not because she wouldn’t want to, she _would_ , she’d want it furiously, but because no one would want her there.

Quinn found her jacket, swung haphazardly over the giant stone cross in the back of the tomb. She frowned, and carefully lifted it off with just two fingers. Even so, she felt an uncomfortable heat nipping at her fingertips. She dropped the coat to the ground, a red and white and black leather stain over the dust and the dead leaves, and sucked on her fingers as she stared at the cross reproachfully.

That was her only regret, really, about the whole vampirism thing. Leaving her parents hadn’t been much of an issue, after the way they’d treated her, and it wasn’t like anyone else wanted anything to do with her after the scandal. Not that she cared about that anymore. When she was still young and angry, yes, but it had been over a hundred years. What’s a little illegal, unwanted abortion among friends? Well, parents.  She’d worked out her aggression over that ages ago. And she’d never been all that attached to the name “Lucy,” either.

She couldn’t remember how it felt, her cross hanging from her neck like an anchor. A reminder, a support. She couldn’t remember, and that was... sad.

“Crisis of faith, Q?” said a snide voice from the doorway.

Quinn spun around. Santana was leaning against the wall near the door, sweat-soaked and smiling like a python. She looked deliberately at Quinn, past her to the cross, and down to the floor, to Quinn’s jacket lying pathetically on the floor.

With an irritated huff, Quinn snatched her jacket up, muttering, “Why don’t you mind your own damn business, Santana.”

Santana just grinned. She didn’t even need to say anything; the very sight of her was a nuisance to Quinn. All loose and easy, nasty confidence and languid sexuality.

“Bless me, Quinnie, for I have sinned,” Santana purred, moving closer. “I slept with another girl. Although, is it _really_ gay if we’re not human? Whatever. Point is, I totally nailed her, and it was beyond awesome.”

“Santana --”

“Ooh, moral me harder, Q,” Santana said, licking her lips. “I’m not done my confession. I had sex with a girl, and _now_ I’m thinking threesome.”

“Santana!” Quinn said, narrowing her eyes.

“What? This whole tortured creature-of-the-night thing you’ve got going is kinda hot, Q --”

Santana wasn’t expecting the first punch, but Quinn wasn’t expecting to throw it. Still, she did, and Santana went down. She came up with a snarl of rage, grabbing Quinn by the neck of her uniform and pulling her down. Santana crawled on top of her, slamming her fist into Quinn’s nose. Quinn groaned with pain, but it didn’t stop her from grabbing hold of Santana’s hips with her knees and throwing her to the side. In a moment she was back on her feet, kicking Santana in the ribs for good measure.

“Ow, ow, Jesus,” Santana hissed, grabbing at Quinn’s foot when she went in for a second shot. Santana tugged her down again, but this time Quinn was on top of her, wailing on her face and her chests with all of the stress that’d been building up since they got back to this _shit_ town.

“I made you, Santana,” Quinn raged. “I made you, and I can unmake you just as easily. You are _mine_.”

“Get off of me!”

Quinn landed one last punch, and got to her feet, breathing heavily. She smoothed out her skirt, staring down at Santana, mussed and bleeding on the floor. “I don’t get it, Santana. You think you’re hot stuff? You think you can lead us? What would you do if I left, huh?”

“Quinn,” Santana mumbled, avoiding her eyes.

“What would you do if I left? If your sire left, and then a few years down the line you found out I was dead? What would you do, Santana?”

“Quinn --”

_“Tell me!”_

“I don’t know!” Santana shouted. She was crying, ugly sobs that ran in tracks through the blood trailing from her nose and lips. She repeated, quieter, “I -- I don’t know.”

“Don’t forget it,” Quinn advised, picking up her jacket again and pulling it on. “And don’t mess with me.”

She brushed past Santana, making her way out of the tomb. Once outside, she took a deep breath, then looked down at her hands. They were red.

 _Whatever_ , she thought. Santana would heal. The blood would wash off. Besides, Santana had pushed her. She was _always_ pushing her. It wasn’t Quinn’s fault, not really.

Brittany came stumbling out of the tomb beside hers, hair a mess and wearing only her skirt and her bra. She took one look at Quinn, then shot her an extremely judgmental look, frowning sullenly. Brittany never liked it when they fought amongst themselves. She pushed by Quinn, already making sympathetic noises before she’d even entered the tomb.

“The moon is totally beside itself tonight,” Quinn heard Brittany say, and she rolled her eyes.

She couldn’t deal with either of their crap tonight. She zipped up her jacket, even though it wasn’t like she actually felt the cold, and jogged out of the graveyard.

Quinn ran through Lima, keeping a steady pace. She passed a few people despite the late hour, but she didn’t stop. She wasn’t really hungry -- she’d lost her appetite, dealing with Santana and her mind games. The people of Lima were safe from her, at least until Friday.

Somehow or other, her feet lead her back to McKinley High’s football field. It was like a magnetic pull. Some things never change, Quinn mused, coming to a stop in the center of the field. The Master had always had some kind of hold over her.

They’d buried her here, Quinn could feel it. Dug up the earth and lowered her bones down. Covered her in layers and layers of spells, metals, and charms, to keep vampires away. That wouldn’t be a problem, though. Quinn had a plan.

God, she ached. The stress, and the fighting, and just everything; it was all adding up to one giant crick in her neck. She rolled her head from shoulder to shoulder, breathing lightly, enjoying the night air. She took out her hair elastic, brushed out the damage Santana did with her vicious hair-pulling, which was just cruel and unnecessary, and pulled it all up into a neater high ponytail.

 _Sometimes you have to take a break from the vengeance and slaughter_ , she thought, _and just be a girl_.

At that moment, Quinn was interrupted by the faint sound of voices, coming from the parking lot. One seemed to be complaining, loudly and plaintively. That whining tone, in addition to the prickling sensation at the back of Quinn’s neck, told her who it was.

Quinn crept towards the parking lot, and hid behind the same dumpster as before as she watched Rachel Berry and some other girl descend the steps of the school. For a moment, all she could think about was how disappointed her father would have been with her, hiding in the trash, but that only made her smirk.

“It’s not the end of the world, Rachel,” the other girl said. She had a comforting arm around the Slayer’s shoulders, and was rubbing her other arm gently. “You know how Kurt is, he’ll come around.”

“It _is_ the end of the world, Mercedes!” Rachel wailed. “You don’t understand -- Kurt is your friend first and foremost, and if he leaves me, he’ll take you with him and I’ll be all alone. I won’t have _anyone_.”

“What, do you think Kurt is my master or something? He calls and I follow?” Mercedes said, stopping and withdrawing a little. “I thought you knew me better, Rachel.”

“Oh, that’s not what I meant, Mercedes,” Rachel said, pulling her back. “It’s just... if it came down to it. Choosing between me and Kurt. You’d choose Kurt, of course you would, he’s your oldest friend and he’s more popular than me and he dresses better than me --”

“Who says I’d have to choose?” Mercedes said, “You’re my friend, Rachel. I _can_ have more than one friend, and I’m not just gonna toss you aside like so much trash. I’d never do that, to you or Kurt.”

Rachel snuggled into Mercedes’ warmth as Quinn watched. Quinn thought back to Brittany and Santana and tried to imagine doing this with them. Just hugging them. Supporting each other.

She snorted indelicately. _Yeah, right_.

“He hasn’t said a word to me all day,” Rachel mumbled into Mercedes’ shoulder. It was so quiet that even Quinn barely heard it, despite the super-hearing and all. “I have enough stress right now, I –“ Rachel sniffed, glancing away from Mercedes. She looked afraid.

“He’ll come around,” Mercedes said again, stroking Rachel’s hair. “But you should consider where he’s coming from, Rachel. It’s not like Kurt just decided suddenly to hate Finn. He must have a reason.”

They resumed walking, making their way towards a car. Mercedes got into the driver’s seat while Rachel slumped down in the passenger’s seat. As they drove off, Quinn heard the opening strains of “Don’t Stop Believing” playing, with Mercedes singing along. They rounded the corner out of the lot, and vanished from sight just as Rachel Berry joined in, quietly.

Quinn stayed hidden in the shadows, watching long after the car was gone. She wondered, distantly, if she would get back to the tomb and find that Santana and Brittany had left. Maybe Santana knew that she couldn’t make it without Quinn, but Brittany didn’t. Brittany was just crazy enough to think they could survive on their own, and -- possibly -- just angry enough to give it a try, after the latest fight. If Brittany left, what would Santana do? Stick by her sire, or follow her -- whatever Brittany was to her?

Quinn realized that she had no idea. All she knew was that -- well, maybe she couldn’t make it without them, either. Maybe what she had said to Santana went for her as well. It wasn’t weakness, it _wasn’t_ , but the Master was gone and Quinn was far from home. They were all she had now.

The crick was back in her neck. Quinn ignored it this time. She probably deserved it.

As she made her way out of the parking lot, back towards her dank, musty tomb, she felt the insane urge to break into song. For a moment, she hummed -- _some will win, some will lose, some are born to sing the blues_ \-- but she stopped quickly, feeling foolish. She wasn’t Rachel freaking Berry. That was a good thing.

 

 

_Thursday_

Rachel watched Kurt out of the corner of her eye. They were in the library again, all three of them, with a little more information but making no real headway for the second day in a row.

Rachel flipped another page listlessly.

She wasn’t giving it her all. She was _slacking_ , like her untalented compatriots -- not Kurt or Mercedes, of course, although they were still marginally less talented than her -- did in glee club. She knew it, but she couldn’t snap herself out of her daze. It was weak, it was pathetic, but every time she tried to muster up the energy to plan, to find the answer, to fix the problem, her epiphany pounded through her head like an arrhythmic, jarring drumbeat.

 _The Master_.

Rachel turned the page, staring blindly down at her book. Instead of print and paper, all she could see was thin, starchy, blonde hair and a cold smile. Long, calloused fingers circling her throat and holding on as easily as they gripped a megaphone, despite her struggles. A low voice saying, “And now, Bernadette, I’m going to suck you dryer than a Brit’s sense of humor, and then I’m going to go and do the same to all of your little glee club friends. Because I can, and because you can’t stop me. Also because William’s hair is reaching society-threatening toxicity. I’m having research done by a crack-team of illegally immigrated scientists that will prove that the fumes emanating from his head are the number one cause of global warming.”

“Rachel?”

“ _Whuh_ \-- huh?”

Mercedes chuckled nervously. “You’re seriously out of it, girl.”

“Sorry,” Rachel muttered shoving her bangs out of her face. She glanced down at her book. It was open to that page about Lucy the Bloody again.

“Listen, I’m just gonna go... get a drink of water, okay? A really long drink of water,” Mercedes said quietly in Rachel’s ear, glancing pointedly at Kurt.

“Right,” said Rachel.

Mercedes smiled encouragingly, giving her a thumbs-up, then headed for the door. She stopped once on her way to pat Kurt gently on the arm, sharing a weak grin with him, and then she was gone.

Rachel bit her lip. Mercedes’ intention was more than obvious, but it wasn’t as simple as she seemed to think it was. Kurt hadn’t said a single word to Rachel since their fight two days ago. He’d sat in icy silence whenever she was near, speaking only to Mercedes and even then in terse, unfriendly tones. He continued to help with research, but his back was always to her and the way he flicked the pages of his books made a quiet cracking sound. She felt like he was trying to make a point. And for Rachel’s part, she hadn’t been able to muster up the energy to confront him, not since the Master had been pushed back to the forefront of her brain.

She really did miss him, though.

Rachel sighed in frustration. What was she supposed to do here? It wasn’t her fault that Kurt had taken an irrational and baseless dislike to her … whatever Finn was. _Boyfriend_ seemed too simple to explain their relationship, given the added levels of preordained enmity overcome and whatnot. _Destined soulmate_ sounded better to Rachel, but it probably wouldn’t go over so well with other people.

Kurt turned another page, noisily.

Rachel pushed herself away from her table and strode over to where he was sitting. “I’m sorry, Kurt,” she said. “Is that what you need to hear? I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m sorry for, but I’m sure I’ve done something wrong besides loving who I love, so if you could just _tell me what it is_ so I can fix it --”

Kurt slammed the book shut. “You’re not in love with Finn, Rachel.”

Rachel gaped at him, then said, “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve loved Finn since the moment I met him.”

“Do you even know the guy, Rachel?” Kurt snapped. “Do you know what his favorite color is, his favorite band, his favorite book? Actually, I’ve met Finn, and I’m not sure he’s capable of reading, so skip that one. But seriously, how well do you know him, _really_?”

“I --” Rachel started, but she cut herself off when she realized she didn’t know. She didn’t have any answers. Finn’s mystery was part of his charm, she told herself. It’s all right to not know things.

 _It’s really, really not_ , the nosy part of her, the part that needed to know everything about everyone, screamed. That part was the majority, and Rachel’s resolve wavered.

Kurt leaned forward, nailing his point home. “Do you even know who he was, _before_ he became a vampire?”

Rachel shook her head mutely.

“You’re not in love with him,” Kurt said smugly, turning back to his book.

“ _What_ is your problem?” Rachel demanded, grabbing his shoulder and yanking him to face her again. His face was white and unreadable. “Whether I’m in love with Finn or not is both none of your business and not the matter at hand. I asked you what I’m doing wrong, and I -- I need an answer, Kurt. I need to know.”

Kurt stared pointedly at her hand until she removed it, but he didn’t turn away again. He just stared at her in silence. Finally, he sighed grumpily, muttering, “Of _course_ you do.”

There was a long pause, and then Kurt took a deep breath and said, “Finn’s -- not a good person, Rachel.”

“How --”

“No, shhh,” he said. He took her hand in his own absently, pulling her down to sit on the bench beside him. He stared down at the closed book in front of him as he continued. “Do you remember when we first started hanging out? Not just being friendly around glee club, but really hanging out.”

“Of course,” Rachel said immediately. It wasn’t like she would forget the first real friends she’d ever had.

“Then -- then you remember Blaine,” Kurt said.

Rachel stiffened.

“I don’t, anymore,” Kurt said, in a voice so quiet she could barely hear him over the humming of the heater. “Not the little things, anyway. I remember the things we did and the things we said, but I don’t remember what his voice sounded like anymore.” Kurt’s forced calm faltered, and his lower lip quivered. He kept his eyes fixed on the book. “I think that’s the worst part. He used to sing to me, but I don’t even remember what it sounded like.”

“And you blame me,” Rachel said quietly.

She couldn’t fault him for it. She wasn’t totally clear on the specifics, but Blaine would never have been taken by the vamps if him, Kurt, and Mercedes hadn’t been following her, trying to figure out her secret. If she’d told them the truth when Kurt had first started asking nosy, probing questions about her weird hours and the knives and that one unfortunate incident in the cafeteria, they would have known better than to follow her into the dark. Blaine wouldn’t have been taken, he wouldn’t have been turned, and he wouldn’t be dead.

It was a miracle Kurt and Mercedes had ever even looked at her after that, let alone stayed friends with her. Rachel’s eyes burned, and she pulled her hand away from Kurt to wipe at them, sniffling.

“Oh, Rachel,” Kurt said, softly, “Is that really what you think?”

She laughed weakly. “If I were you, I would.”

“No you wouldn’t,” said Kurt flatly. “If you were me, you’d realize that you saved me, and Mercedes, and you tried your hardest to save Blaine.”

Rachel stared at him hopefully. “So -- so you don’t blame me, then?”

Kurt swallowed roughly. “Maybe at first. You were an easy target -- you always have been. But I realized, eventually, that there are only two people to blame for what happened to Blaine.”

The silence was deafening following that statement. Rachel held her breath as long as she could, but eventually she burst out, “Who?”

“Well,” Kurt said, and his voice cracked and his eyes watered, “there’s me, obviously.”

Rachel’s jaw dropped. “That’s ridiculous, Kurt. I know you’re distraught right now, but that’s ridiculous.”

“He followed me,” Kurt said. “He was always saying he would follow me anywhere. So that’s my fault. I lost him when the vamps attacked us. And,” he cleared his throat roughly, “I’m the one who staked him, in the end. So. Three strikes, you’re out. That’s how it goes, right?”

He sniffed, wiping at his cheeks. Rachel’s heart ached, and she reached out to grasp his hands again. “You’re not to blame, Kurt,” she tried, but he just shook his head, smiling bitterly.

She squeezed his hands silently, then remembered something he’d said. “Did... did you say there were _two_ people to blame, Kurt?”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice hoarse, but he wasn’t crying anymore, so that was good. “Rachel, when did you first meet Finn?”

Rachel paused, thrown by the subject change, but she shrugged internally. Kurt was unpredictable, to say the least. “A week or so before, uh, that. He warned me about the Master. He’s been protecting me since the beginning, you know. That may seem unnecessary, given my advantages, but I think it’s sweet, and it really speaks to his character,” she said, smiling dreamily.

Kurt cleared his throat sharply, and she remembered where she was and what they’d just been talking about. Perhaps waxing poetic about her -- whatever Finn was -- wasn’t exactly polite, since Kurt had lost his -- whatever Blaine was. “Sorry,” she said, blushing.

Kurt shrugged. Then he paused, and caught her eye meaningfully. “You say he’s been protecting you from the start. He was watching over you?”

“Yes,” Rachel said, and she felt a quiet thrill at the knowledge of how much Finn cared.

“So how come _he_ couldn’t have saved Blaine?”

Rachel took a breath to answer defensively, but the look on Kurt’s face stopped her short. He really wanted to know. He was one of her best friends, so he deserved that much, but when she thought about it, she honestly could not come up with a reason that wasn’t “ _Blaine isn’t me_.”

She disentangled herself from Kurt, rising to her feet and starting to pace. Wringing her hands, she said, “I don’t have time to -- to think about that, Kurt, I’m sorry but I don’t. There are bigger things going on right now, and I need to be fully in the present. I can’t dwell on mistakes I’ve made in the past. I can’t -- I just can’t, not now, I need to be --”

_The Master._

God, she would die. She would die if they raised her, if Quinn raised her, she would die, she would die like she did the last time. Poof. No more Rachel. No more shining future, just a cold unloved grave and the bitter smell of lost potential.

“Rachel?” Kurt said. He got to his feet, concern written all over his face. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Kurt,” Rachel stuttered. “I’m fine. I will _be_ fine. I just need to -- to get my head back in the game.”

“Is this about the Master?” he asked, and she started to shake her head no, then bit her lip and nodded. Kurt sighed, and pulled her into a hug. “You’re right,” he said into her hair, “you _are_ going to be fine. You’re Rachel Berry. You’re an unstoppable force, remember? Believe me, I’d hate to be anyone who stood in your way.”

“I don’t know if I can do this, Kurt,” she whispered. “I _died_.”

“And we brought you back,” he said, rubbing her back soothingly. “CPR ring a bell? Someday you’re going to have to tell me if that makes Mercedes your first kiss.”

“Kurt!” Rachel said, blushing, and she smacked him on the arm as she pulled away. She was smiling, though. Kurt smiled back, and finished, “We may not be Slayers, but we’ve got your back. Sue and Quinn aren’t going to lay a finger on you, not if we can help it.”

She yanked him into another hug, gripping him tightly. A moment later, Mercedes sauntered in, wiping at her mouth with an obviously deliberate attempt to look casual. Her acting was sub-par, and Kurt’s smirk indicated that he, too, had realized immediately what had happened, but Rachel decided she’d let it slide, at least for now. She couldn’t be more grateful to Mercedes. Or to Kurt.

“That was one awfully long water break, missy,” Kurt said. Mercedes shrugged, trying to keep a straight face, but a grin broke through. Rachel giggled at them both, squeezing Kurt’s shoulder.

That awful mantra was still repeating through her head, but it wasn’t as insistent now, and she wasn’t getting the same level of pre-show jitters as she had been before. “All right,” Rachel said, “let’s beat this thing.”

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Friday

Around five o’clock, Rachel entered the football stands with the rest of the crowd. Somehow, despite their complete and utter lack of talent, the McKinley Titans always managed to attract a good audience. The two teams were warming up on the field, the band was setting up in their corner, and the spectators were finding their seats. The stage was very nearly set.

Just as she, Kurt, and Mercedes were passing the band on their way to where some of their glee friends were waiting, Rachel peeled off. Before leaving for the game, she had stashed a video camera in her bag. Once she made it through the crowd – travelling counter-current was absolute hell, particularly given her diminutive height – she set it up on its tripod just behind the band. No one ever sat behind them; they were almost as awful as the football players, and far louder. Rachel was a firm believer in the importance of reviewing your performance afterwards, and it wouldn’t do to have people, god forbid, walking in front of the camera. 

Once she had double- and triple-checked that the camera was recording, she made her way back to Mercedes and Kurt where they sat with Mike, Tina, and the rest of the non-football playing members of the glee club. She settled down into the seat they’d saved for her between them, but every muscle in her body was on high alert as she stared down at the field. It looked innocent enough, sure, but underneath that sprightly green grass lay the bones of the most evil creature Rachel had ever battled.

Just then, the football teams began to troop back into their respective locker rooms. Rachel shifted in her seat. She had no clue when exactly Quinn would make her move, but something told her it would be soon. There was a faint tingling in the back of her neck, clueing her in to the presence of vampires. None were visible as of yet, but they were there. They were waiting.

Well, so was she.

First things first, though. “Did you get Sam to hide the box like I asked?” she said, turning to Mercedes, who nodded.

“Sure did. It’s down there, under the Titan’s bench.”

“And how did you convince him to do that, Miss Jones?” Kurt asked, smirking teasingly, and Mercedes blushed and ducked her head.

“Mind your own business, Kurt,” she said. Kurt laughed, smacking her on the arm.

“Maybe she didn’t even have to lie,” Rachel teased, coming out of her pre-show daze to join in to their fun. “Maybe she just had to-- to bat her eyes and he carried the box off like a gentleman without another word!” She wouldn’t actually have been surprised if that were the case. Mercedes was very pretty, and Sam was clearly crushing.

Kurt laughed and said, “I bet you told him they were accessories for your planned post-victory canoodling behind the bleachers, didn’t you? Mercedes, you’re just terrible.”

“Kurt!” Mercedes smacked Kurt in the arm, giggling helplessly. “No. I just -- I told him that --”

The off-key blare of a trumpet from the marching band cut her off, and they fell silent. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer called, “ your McKinley Titans !”

They waited, and they waited some more, but the field remained empty.

The trumpet sounded again, louder than before, with an obviously impatient edge to it. Finally both teams came traipsing out, their thundering footsteps drowning out the confused murmurs coming from the crowd. Rachel’s eyes narrowed. The tingling had grown stronger, and the way the players were moving, slowly, aimlessly, around the center of the field, was putting her on edge. She scanned the area around the field. Her fists clenched when she noticed the leggy blonde who emerged from the shadows and skipped over to the opposing team’s bench. Brittany , she remembered. Brittany, who sat down cross-legged to enjoy the show.

The other two couldn’t be far behind. Time for the final act to begin: the denouement. She rose to her feet, lifting her head to an appropriately high angle and clenching her fist. Let the real game begin, Rachel thought. Football had nothing on her.

The crowd’s bemused buzz grew louder as the players continued to mull around the field with no clear purpose. Then, suddenly, Santana came running out of the McKinley changing room, still wearing that bloody Cheerio’s uniform, and a spontaneous outcry arose. People in the crowd rose to their feet, screaming and gesturing. For a moment Rachel actually thought that the people of Lima had learned some self-preservation and had sensed the vampire’s evil nature, but the screaming had an undeniably relieved and triumphant note to it.

“They think one of the Cheerios survived,” Kurt murmured, his eyes wide with horror. “What kind of monster would create hope just to --”

“A vampire,” Rachel replied shortly. Down on the field, Santana danced and shimmied, laughing. While Rachel couldn’t remember ever loathing anyone more, she was reluctantly impressed by the vampire’s stage presence, not to mention her undeniable skill at making an entrance.

Rachel clenched her fists and began making her way down to the field, winding her way through cheering fans whose eyes were fixed on Santana. Behind her, she heard Kurt yell, “She doesn’t even go here!” and then Mercedes' voice, raised in agreement: “Sit your fool asses down, people, and use your heads! None of you’ve ever seen this girl in your life!”

Santana laughed, waving at the audience, then turned around to face the teams. She clapped her hands once, yelling something indistinguishable. The players of both teams, Rachel realized, had to be under her thrall -- they immediately dropped to the ground. As Rachel watched in horror, struggling to push her way past the crowds without accidentally hurting anyone, the boys started digging at the ground in the dead center of the field with their bare hands. Hunks of sod and grass flew through the air over their heads. Santana danced around them in a mockery of a cheer routine, waving a pair of pompoms she’d gotten from who-knows-where.

Rachel was going to wipe the field with her.

She was just shoving through the final row of people, tossing careless “Sorry!”’s over her shoulder, when Quinn stalked out onto the field, holding a bullhorn in one hand and a shovel in the other. She tossed the shovel to Sam Evans with a disdainful glance, then raised the bullhorn over her head. It sounded out, whiny and loud and awful, and then fell silent along with the crowd.

“Hello, McKinley!” Quinn said, smiling charmingly. She didn’t bother using the bullhorn; the stands were so quiet that it wouldn’t have been necessary. “I’m going to need to ask you all to remain in your seats. The gates surrounding this place are locked, and I don’t want to have to deal with any excess mess, so just stay where you are.”

Rachel stepped out onto the pitch at that moment, chin held defiantly high and mouth open with a ringingly heroic statement warm on her tongue. “People of -- mmph!” Brittany appeared from the shadows, as quiet on her feet as a cat, and wrapped an arm around Rachel’s neck, silencing her instantly.

“I hear Slayer blood is, like, maple syrup and cheesecake at the same time,” Brittany said in a flat voice, then she tilted Rachel’s head to the side and nuzzled her neck. Rachel shuddered.

The doors to the changing rooms burst open again, and this time a group of ten hulking vamps, each set with a malicious grin and a bad sense of hygiene, entered the field. They spread out, surrounding the field. Their eyes watched the crowd hungrily.

“Don’t worry about these creeps, folks,” Quinn called. “They’re just here to make sure you do as I say. All muscle and no brain. Kind of like everyone else in this dump of a town, huh? Anyway. Just do as you’re told and everything will be fine. Really, you might as well just relax. There is literally nothing you can do to stop this.”

The football players continued to dig as the assembled audience stayed frozen in silence. There was fear in the air, fear so potent that Rachel could almost smell it. Whatever else could be said about the residents of Lima, they had developed amazing survival instincts. The only sound was the droning huff of the players’ heavy breathing, and the thunk of Sam’s shovel. The work went faster with the shovel; soon players were climbing into a shallow pit to dig deeper. Quinn circled the hole like a shark, whispering sweet nothings to the players.

It seemed like the whole world was waiting for something to happen.

Santana abandoned Quinn to oversee the boys alone, and she stalked back towards Brittany with a huff. When she reached them, she glanced Rachel over briefly before dismissing her with a flick of her ponytail. “Should’ve known Q’d be getting her chuckles off on this,” she said to Brittany. “She’s practically creaming herself over all the attention the crowd’s giving her. It’s disgusting. She’s like an alleycat being offered catnip for the first time in her life, complete with smells and ringworm.”

“Don’t be mad because they’re staring at her now, instead of you,” Brittany said, reaching out with her free hand to twine her pinky finger with Santana’s. “I’m staring at you. The stars are staring at you.”

And that was – all right, it was sweet, creepy but sweet, Rachel had to admit. Vampires in love, though... something about it seemed downright wrong to her. In the back of her mind she could hear Kurt raising an eyebrow at her seeming hypocrisy, but Finn -- Finn was a completely different case. Finn had a soul, after all. The situations weren’t alike in the slightest, so Rachel quashed down Kurt’s imagined dissent with nary a moment of self-doubt.

A shout went up from the hole, something triumphant and primal. Then Sam Evans climbed out of the pit, waving a single, dirty bone in the air. His eyes, Rachel saw, sought out Quinn’s immediately, and he placed it reverently at her feet. Santana rolled her eyes, but Brittany giggled softly. “Round and round the garden, like a football player,” she whispered. The doors to the changing rooms burst open again, and this time a group of ten hulking vamps, each set with a malicious grin and a bad sense of hygiene, entered the field.

“Don’t worry about the creeps surrounding the stands, folks,” Quinn called. “They’re just there to make sure you do as I say. All muscle and no brain. Kind of like everyone else in this dump of a town, huh? Anyway. Just do as you’re told and everything will be fine.”

 

Rachel fumed in silence, but held her peace. Her time would come.

There was a dull thud sound from the pit, and Brittany grinned. ”Bzzt,” she said.

Rachel rolled her eyes. “You are bizarre , do you know that? And frankly I’m beginning to wonder if it’s all just an act, because no one could be as random and incomprehensible as you are!”

“Careful, you morons,” Quinn yelled, before Rachel could continue. “If you so much as chip one bone I will make the remainder of your lives a living hell.”

Santana chuckled, wrapping her arms around Brittany’s waist from behind. Her knuckles dug into Rachel’s spine. “Operation, Britt-Britt? Really?”

“I like it,” Brittany replied absently, watching as the football players carefully lifted the Master’s bones out of the ground. Rachel’s heart began to pound and her head spun. They were really doing it. Oh god, she thought, it was actually happening.

Brittany continued, “It’s good practice.”

Santana laughed, and leaned in for a kiss. Rachel grabbed her moment. Taking advantage of Brittany and Santana’s distraction, she wiggled until she had room enough to move, then jammed her elbow viciously into Brittany’s spleen, yanking at the arm around her neck with her free hand simultaneously. She burst free, and took off at a dead sprint towards the benches.

One vampire came at her from the side, his arms outstretched and his face distorted. She didn’t waste any time. As the crowd, or at least those who had noticed her predicament, cried out, she ducked low, grabbing his wrists and tumbling him over her shoulder. For once, she felt grateful for her short stature -- it came in handy for overbalancing her opponents, but little else. Well, it also guaranteed that she was always shorter than any potential male co-star the drama department could throw at her, which was definitely a bonus. It wasn’t that Rachel thought there was anything wrong with a tall girl dating a shorter guy, it was simply that she found the aesthetics of a relationship between one such as herself and a taller man (say, Finn) far better.

Anyway.

The vamp hit the ground with a thud and Rachel was upright again, sprinting headlong for her box. Two more peeled off from sentry duty downstage left, a woman and a man in ratty leather, and started loping towards her. Rachel was so close, so close. She threw herself forwards as she reached out and snatched the box to her body, tucking it in close as she slammed into the ground with a thud, sliding a few feet and thumping her forehead on the edge of the bench.

The woman came at her with her foot aimed at Rachel’s ribs, which was completely unacceptable. Rachel couldn’t very well sing with broken ribs. Even the tiniest fracture would be disastrous.

In other words, this harpy was going down.

When the foot came into range, Rachel’s stake was waiting for it. Then, while the vamp jumped and shrieked, holding her ravaged foot in one hand, Rachel flipped herself up and put her stake to use a second time, dusting the vamp with ease.

There were three more surrounding the stands in front of her, including the first vamp and the man who’d been with the woman, and another six on the stands across the field. One thing at a time, Rachel thought. Her dads had always told her that fighting was just like choreography -- take it piece by piece, don’t sacrifice speed for strength or vice versa, and always look fantastic while you do it.

Rachel tossed the box to one side, keeping only a stake in one hand and a sword in the other. “Alright, Rachel,” she whispered to herself as she squared off with the first vampire, in front of section A. “You have the audience you’ve always deserved. Don’t blank now.”

“Come to my blade, little girl,” the vampire growled.

“You sound like you got rejected from a Pirates of Penzance audition,” she said, smiling, eyes narrowed, then threw herself at him, stake-first. He leveled his sword at her, but she didn’t waver. He’d asked her to, after all.

He didn’t last long. His form was decidedly sloppy, and he didn’t have Rachel’s finesse and skill with both hands. He only had the one ‘blade,’ after all. She had two, and could use them with equal brilliance.

When he was dust sprinkling her Mary-Janes, she searched out Mercedes and Kurt with her eyes. “Get these people out of here!” she yelled, wiping her hair out of her face with her sword-arm. Ugh. Of all the days to leave her headband at home.

“Rachel, look out !” Kurt yelled.

She was bowled over by the next vampire, and they went flying in a heap, legs and arms and weapons tangled. As they smacked down, Rachel’s head bounced off the ground, and she let go of her sword with weak fingers, groaning. It was echoed by the crowd in the stands, and Rachel took a -- admittedly disoriented and befuddled -- second to appreciate their response. For a second she reveled giddily in their support, but then the vampire was grabbing her by the hair and slamming her head into the ground a second time, and Rachel forgot all about the crowd.

“Ow, ow, ow --” she grabbed the vampire’s hair, which was a striking and obviously dyed red, and yanked her back. “How do you like it, hmmm? Maybe next time you’ll think before going for the dirty shot!”

Rachel flipped vampire number two off of her and rolled to her knees, brushing herself off. The crowd near her cheered, and she turned to them with a smile. “Fellow Titans fans, while I appreciate your accolades, I assure you that I have been training for this moment all my life and am completely safe --”

“Fight now, brag later, Rachel!” Mercedes called, directing Rachel’s attention back to her target, who was picking herself up off the ground.

“ Fine ,” Rachel said, rolling her eyes. She threw a punch that landed solidly in the vampire’s solar plexus; the vibrations shook all the way up her arm. The vampire tried to kick her legs out from under her, but Rachel evaded her easily, grabbing her around the waist and dumping her onto the ground. Rachel followed, straddling the vamp around the waist and slamming her stake down with an incredibly satisfying thunk . That thunk , she thought as the vampire burst, was rather like the final trill at the end of a song -- the vibrant sound of success.

She didn’t have time to savor it, though, because the third and final vampire wrapped his huge, leather-clad arms around her ribcage and dragged her backwards, kicking and flailing awkwardly. He tightened his arms, squeezing her roughly, and Rachel would have sworn she heard her ribs creak. Her back was screaming, and although her legs were connecting with his shins he didn’t seem to care.

Rachel gasped weakly, and dug her nails into the forearms under her armpits. The vampire swore but didn’t let go. The world was flickering around the edges under the pressure on her lungs, and the crowd’s frightened yells were a humming blur in the background.

No , Rachel thought, tightening her fingers as well as she could around her remaining stake. She wasn’t going to die at the hands of a lackey . There was so much left to live for, and so many reasons not to be killed by, well, a lackey . That’d be incredibly embarrassing.

She dropped her head forward, feigning faintness, and when the arms slackened around her (to the accompaniment of the groans of the crowd, which were supremely gratifying even through the haze clouding her mind), she rammed her head back with as much force as she could master. It connected with the vampire’s face with a loud crunch, which she assumed was his nose, and the arms around her dropped away entirely as he jumped backwards, swearing like a sailor.

Rachel spun on the ball of her foot, rising up, striking out with her stake where she estimated his heart was through her blurred vision.

Judging by the way he kept moaning for a solid ten seconds after impact, she missed.

Rachel rubbed at her eyes until they cleared, gasping for breath, then looked at her handiwork and promptly frowned in disgust. The stake was stuck half-in to his chest in the dead center.

The vampire grimaced. “You try looking good with a piece of wood jammed into your chest, sweetcheeks,” he snarled, tugging ineffectually at the stake.

“Actually, I was expressing disappointment in my own aim,” Rachel said, putting her hands on her hips. “Even half-blind, I should be better than that.”

She shrugged, then snapped out a spinning-back-kick, sending him flying backwards. While he was winded and gasping on the ground, she grabbed the stake out of his chest and slammed it home. He exploded into dust with a final grimace, and she stood up, waving her stake in the air, yelling, “Perfect ten!”

With the way clear, Mercedes and Kurt began to make their way towards her, and they exited the stands to exchange exuberant high-fives with her. Kurt gave her a quick hug, then said, “There’s still five more across the field, never mind two brainwashed football teams and the Three Sisters of Bellevamp. Stay focused.”

“Right,” Rachel said, nodding. “Do you have my headband?”

“I do,” Mercedes said, pulling it out of her bag and settling it into Rachel’s hair. She gave her head a quick, fond, pat, then said, “Where do you need us, Rachel?”

“Get everyone out,” Rachel said, reluctantly. She’d loved having an audience, for once in her life having people see and appreciate what she had done for them every day since she’d turned fourteen, but she supposed their well-being was more important than her ego. “If I don’t manage to stop them, and that’s a big if, mind you, because I am obviously going to prevail over her just like I did over these four, then I want these people safe. Did you see their faces? The crowd’s or the vamps’, really, because they were both just fantastic --”

“Okay, we get it, you were awesome,” Mercedes said with a nervous giggle. “Now what exactly is Quinn going to do with these people if we don’t get them out? Maybe we could use their help, overtake all the vamps with an army of angry Titans fans while you go after Quinn!”

“No, that’s no good,” Rachel said urgently. She switched her gaze back and forth between Mercedes and Kurt and back again, begging them to understand. “If the Master comes back, she’ll be weak. That’s why Quinn is doing this tonight. She needs the crowd. Sue needs to feed.”

”Oh god,” Kurt said. He cast his gaze back over the crowd. These people had been awful to him, absolutely awful, and for a moment Rachel wondered what he’d do. Then he nodded decisively, and said, “We’ll have to smash the gates or something. Bunch of burly football fans, shouldn’t be a problem, right?” He paused. “Do you – do you need help? I mean, can I help?”

“I appreciate the offer, Kurt, but these people are the priority,” Rachel said. She refrained from mentioning that, despite Kurt’s talents, he’d probably just be in her way. That wasn’t cruelty; that was fact.

“We’ll get them out, Rachel,” Mercedes said, already turning back to the crowd. “Go work.”

Rachel nodded. She squeezed Kurt’s hand once as Mercedes started to yell at the crowd, directing them to head for the exit single-file and to assist anyone who needed it, then ran for her box. She grabbed an axe for herself, and tucked one more stake into her waistband. Finally, she kicked the box, and the rest of the weapons, towards Kurt, and after one last look, turned to face the field.

She had two options: make it past the army of football players and the three faux-cheerleaders in the center to kill the six vamps holding the rest of the crowd captive, or break Santana’s hold on the players and get them to free the crowd.

In the center, Quinn was setting up candles in a circle around the Master’s bones, oblivious or uncaring of the way Rachel was tearing through her lackeys, while Santana flipped through an old tome and Brittany danced en pointe around the circle, sprinkling salt. Rachel’s heart nearly stopped. It looked like her decision was made for her; they were obviously almost ready to do the ritual. Rachel was running out of time. If Sue were brought back, not only would the crowd that remained be killed, the entire town would be doomed. Sue Sylvester had something of an obsession with revenge, to put it simply.

Rachel rolled her shoulders twice, working out the kinks, then straightened her back and strode for the center.

“Quinn!” she called.

Quinn glanced up, and saw who it was. She rolled her eyes. Then she noticed the stands emptying, and her fist clenched so tight that she broke a particularly thin candle in two. “That doesn’t change anything, Slayer,” she said, through what Rachel noticed had to be extremely clenched teeth, given the tic in her jaw. Quinn forced a smile, and continued, “In case it escaped your notice, I still have half left. That’s enough to last the Master until we hit the town, I think.”

Rachel scoffed. “Oh, please. Have you met Sue?”

Quinn scowled. “Brittany?”

With the tiniest of thuds, Brittany came out of her perfect pointe into a demi-pliée , executing a half turn that left her facing Rachel. “Your elbow is a weapon of righteousness,” she said. “It hurt.”

“That’s -- okay...” Rachel said, frowning bemusedly, but all thought slipped away when Brittany came racing at her, moving faster than anyone should be able to. In an instant Brittany was in front of her, striking out lightning quick in a kick that sent Rachel tumbling, losing the axe in an instant.

She had to stop dropping things. It was getting embarrassing. In her defense, it was an incredible kick, Rachel thought.

“The fairies made me fast,” Brittany explained to Rachel’s impressed stare, then she swung her fist down onto Rachel’s collarbone, knocking her down despite Rachel’s too-slow attempt to block her. “They come to me at night sometimes and leave teeth. I don’t really get it, but if it makes them happy then I’m cool with it.”

“ What ?” Rachel asked, holding her shoulder with one hand and pushing herself up with the other.

“Nothing,” Brittany said, planting a foot solidly into Rachel’s stomach and pressing down with her heel. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Rachel grabbed at Brittany’s other ankle, pulling her down with a crash, and rolled away, coughing. Her stomach ached hollowly, but she pushed herself up once again. On your feet, Rachel, she thought, struggling to control her breathing. Be like Lea Salonga. Be like Patti. Hold it together. Work that diaphragm of steel!

Suddenly, Brittany was there, fists slamming into Rachel’s back and prompting another spell of coughing. She fell forward, her face pressing against the cool grass. From down there, she could see what was left of the crowd, the people still held prisoner. Held prisoner like puppies in puppy farms, or like poor baby cows getting ready to become veal. Rachel’s eyes stung.

Brittany sighed in disappointment, then got to her knees behind her, pressing down along the length of her back. “Don’t give up yet, Rachel,” Brittany said into Rachel’s neck. “You’re the hero. It’s your name on the billboard. I can, like, see it. You’re not allowed to give up, that’s not how it goes.”

“What?” Rachel said, going limp.

“... What what?” Brittany said. Her voice sounded genuinely confused. Rachel twisted her neck to look Brittany in the face, but her eyes were open and guileless.

“What do you mean, what what ? You just said --” Rachel huffed in irritation, and that irritation gave her the strength to buck Brittany off. Rachel got to her feet as quick as she could, and raced over to where Brittany lay, face down, giggling into the ground. “You are so incomprehensible,” Rachel said, shaking her head in helpless frustration.

“Sticks and stones,” Brittany sing-songed.

Rachel ignored that, grabbing Brittany by her ponytail and pulling her up. She wrapped her arms awkwardly around her, struggling to compensate for the large height difference and struggling even harder not to compare it to the one between her and Finn. Hugging Finn wasn’t that awkward, was it? She shoved those thoughts away forcefully, pulling her stake out of her belt to hover it over Brittany’s heart.

“Santana!” Rachel stage-whispered.

Quinn didn’t seem to notice, but Santana looked up from her book, and her eyes narrowed. She rose to her feet and sauntered casually over, glancing over her shoulder to Quinn every few steps to make sure she wasn’t looking. Santana seemed fully aware that if Quinn were to be alerted to the situation, Rachel would dust Brittany right then and there. “You want to leave her the hell alone, Slayer, or I’mma go all Lima Heights on you, phallic piece of wood be damned,” Santana said as soon as she was close enough.

Rachel frowned in confusion, her gaze flashing back and forth between Santana, who glared at her menacingly, and Quinn, whose back was turned to them and whose attention was focused downwards at the bones of her sire.

“Oh yeah,” Santana purred, playing a large knife between her fingers. “I’m from around these parts, didn’t you know? I’m just like you. Lima trash. Before I met Brittany and Quinn, I wasn’t going anywhere. She got me out of here, so if you know what’s good for you, you won’t touch her.”

“Big talk, considering I’m the one holding all the cards right now, Santana,” Rachel challenged, wiggling the stake over Brittany’s heart. She frowned. “Now I don’t want to hurt Brittany, I mean, any more than I want to hurt any vampire, which is kind of a lot, but -- I mean to say it’s not personal. But I can make it personal if I have to. Now, look, I’m not asking for much. Just – just drop the thrall, and leave. We can do this peacefully, Santana.”

Santana glanced back at Quinn, then to Brittany, obviously torn. She crossed her arms, scowling and hunching her shoulders a little, and made to turn back to Quinn.

“Santana,” Rachel said, desperately, “Santana, don’t let her make you a coward! That’s what you are, with her. Doesn’t Brittany deserve better?”

Santana turned back to her, deadly slow. “What did you say to me?”

“I said you’re a coward,” Rachel said. She swallowed nervously. “You’re a coward, and if you choose to do this ritual instead of saving Brittany then you’re an idiot too,” she declared, forcing on a confident front. Everything hinged on Santana.

Santana stalked toward Rachel, bitchy scowl blistering in its loathing. Rachel tilted her chin up defiantly, and dug the stake in a tiny bit, bringing Santana to a screeching halt.

“Make the right choice, Santana,” Rachel said.

“You sound like a broken record,” Santana said, her voice harsh to cover the weakness underneath. “Or like one of those anti-drug commercials. Or like a mosquito, or a leaf blower, or a rake on pavement or a dwarf on helium or an infinite number of other annoying things. Don’t you ever shut up?”

“Not really,” Rachel admitted. “Some people might consider it a character flaw, but I think it works to my advantage more often than not. And it’ll come in useful in interviews with the press once my inevitable fame begins, too.” She cleared her throat. “But we’re not talking about me here. We’re talking about you.”

“Cut the therapist crap, Slayer --”

“I’m not trying to be your therapist, Santana,” Rachel said, rolling her eyes. “I’m sure your issues are too numerous and insidious and deeply-rooted for me to work through. Congratulations, you’re a bit crazy.”

“Then what?” Santana said, propping her hands onto her hips. Rachel noticed the way her feet shifted nervously on the ground. Santana’s shoulders were still hunched defensively. Softening her tone, Rachel said, “I just -- I don’t want anyone to die tonight, Santana. Weirdly enough, that includes you and Brittany and Quinn. I don’t understand it, either,” she said with a quiet laugh when Santana raised an eyebrow.

Santana stared at her for a long time, unreadable. Then she cast a nervous look over her shoulder, and said, “Fine. Hand over Brittany and we’ll get out of your hair.”

“You’ll stop your thrall?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Santana said.

Rachel sagged with relief. Or, well, she would have, if she didn’t have perfect posture and also a natural inclination to look her best in front of an audience or an enemy.

“You are one weird-ass dumpling, Slayer,” Santana said incredulously.

“You’d be surprised how often I get that,” Rachel said. “ I am.”

Santana snickered meanly. “Yeah, whatever makes you feel better about yourself.”

Rachel shrugged. Brittany slipped out of her slack grip, and pressed a dry kiss to Rachel’s cheek. “Be seeing you,” Brittany said, quietly, into her cheek. She jogged to Santana, who took her hand, then turned to Rachel with an unreadable look. “Go easy on Q,” she mumbled, scowling.

Then Brittany and Santana were off and running for the gate.

Quinn looked up, finally, when the football players around her began to stir. Rachel watched as Quinn scanned the area, watched the tightening around her eyes as she noticed Brittany and Santana’s departure. Watched her stare down Sam Evans, the first one to recover, and wave a hand at him. “Don’t even try it,” Quinn said, her eyes hard and angry, and Sam seemed to wilt under his surfer haircut, even in his bulky uniform.

The other players were starting to come to themselves, muttering bemusedly and wondering what had happened to the game. When they noticed Quinn, in her bloody uniform, kneeling over the dusty bones of her sire, they started to back up slowly. Quinn smiled thinly, and Rachel swallowed. “Sam,” she said quietly, “get the others, and get the crowd out of here.”

“What about those, uh, v-vampires?” Sam stuttered, staring with wide eyes over at the six vamps still guarding the crowd across the field.

Rachel blinked. “V- what?”

“Because, I mean, we’re pretty crap at football. I’m not sure we’ll be much better at this slaying thing,” Sam explained earnestly.

“Who -- who said anything about vampires?” Rachel said with an awkward laugh. She smiled as brightly as possible. Judging by the nervous look Sam sent her and the way Quinn rolled her eyes, it backfired.

“Mercedes told me,” Sam said, fiddling with the shovel and not meeting her eyes. “Is that cool? I mean, she needed someone to hide the weapons, and I was that someone, and she just -- yeah. That’s it.”

Rachel tilted her head in disbelief, gaping a little -- okay, maybe a lot. But she shook herself out of it. “Whatever, okay, I honestly -- this night can’t get any stranger than it already is. Just, just get the crowd out, okay? You have two teams of big, burly football men. I’m sure between you there’s enough skill, or at the very least, muscle, to take out six vampires.”

Sam nodded, “Right. Yes. Okay.”

He turned to call instructions to the teams. Quinn watched in silence. As the teams started to head out, Quinn said, in a voice that was pure sugar, “Leave the shovel, please.”

Sam turned with an easy smile, dropping the shovel without a second thought. Then he realized what he’d done, and with a look of horror reached back to grab it, but Quinn was up in his face, all poison smiles and dark eyes, trailing her fingers down his throat. “I said leave it,” she said, and he did.

Side by side, separated by only a few feet, Rachel and Quinn watched the teams take down Quinn’s lackeys. “You’re not going to help them?”

“They’re just a bunch of nobodies, even if they are vamps,” Quinn said, voice cold. “Bunch of Lima nobodies.”

“You’re losing your blood source,” Rachel pointed out. She wasn’t sure why she was arguing, but -- well, she didn’t understand , she didn’t understand what was going on. Maybe she was strange for a Slayer, like Santana said, but she clearly had nothing on Quinn. Vampires were simple. Blood, sex, violence, it came to them easily and it was all they cared about. They didn’t let a couple hundred people leave without a fight. The fight was half the fun, actually.

“I guess I’ll just take my sire sightseeing, then,” Quinn said. Her voice was totally neutral.

They watched in silence as the players overwhelmed the vampires, taking a few scrapes but no real damage. The vamps slunk off with their tails between their legs, while the players led the crowd out to the gates. Not one person looked back. It was clear that the audience was performing that neat little trick everyone in Lima had perfected, forgetting the events of the night. Well, the specifics, at least. In the morning, everyone would agree that, oh, a gang of stoned teenagers pulled a dangerous and ill-advised prank, with no ill consequences. Or maybe a rival show choir decided to pull some intimidation tactics during the football game. And everyone would certainly agree that the McKinley Titans lost.

At the last moment, Sam turned to look at Rachel, concern evident in his face. She waved at him weakly, giving him her best “I am the heroine of this story and I will prevail despite any and all hardships so I don’t need you here” smile. It worked; he left, closing the gate behind him.

And then there were two.

The air was still and quiet once again. Rachel scanned the field, taking in the trash abandoned on the field, left behind in the rush to exit, and off to her left the gaping pit where Sue Sylvester had been buried beneath layers of charms and precautions. The stands were empty, save for a few forgotten jackets and foamy fingers. In front of her, calling to her, was the circle, and in it Sue’s bones.

Rachel drew herself up with a breath. She turned to Quinn, and with a nervous laugh said, “Well, this seems a little anticlimactic.”

Quinn gave her a small, nasty smile. “What? You won’t perform without a crowd?”

“No! I -- I just mean...” Rachel paused, trying to put the feeling into words. All she could think of was what she’d said to Santana: I don’t want anyone to die . “This all feels so unnecessary. I mean. Why are we doing this?”

“I thought it was obvious,” Quinn said, turning slightly to glance at Rachel. “I want my sire back. You want her to stay in the ground. That’s a pretty big difference of opinion, Slayer.”

“But that’s what I mean! Why? ” Rachel pressed. “Why do you want her back? I admit, I probably didn’t know the Master as well as you did, and to be quite frank I’m grateful for that because she was a cruel, hateful woman with a talent for making others feel bad about themselves --”

Quinn interrupted. “That’s my sire you’re talking about, so watch your freaking mouth, stubbles.”

“You don’t need her, Quinn,” Rachel said, staring up at Quinn desperately. She wasn’t sure why, but -- she didn’t want this. She didn’t want this fight. There was something about Quinn that was so human, despite it all. There was a, a depth or something. She was like the Phantom, Rachel thought. Quinn did these terrible things, but there was some kind of internal conflict constantly brewing under the surface. Did that make Rachel Christine? She did practice the vocal runs at the end of ‘ Think of Me’ during the last five minutes of her daily shower solo, so the metaphor fit nicely, in her mind.

Quinn scowled, and all thoughts of how Quinn might look in a half-mask fled Rachel. “You don’t know me, Slayer. You don’t know my sire. And I’m not listening to you.”

“Quinn --” Rachel tried, but Quinn swung the shovel at neck-level, and Rachel was too busy ducking to continue talking.

Well, fine. Rachel had done her very best to reach out to Quinn. If Quinn wasn’t going to give in and let Rachel save her, then they would fight. Fine. Rachel dropped to the ground as Quinn swung the shovel again, rolling to her left until her fingers closed around the shaft of her axe. Then she was jumping to her feet, flipping it nervously in one hand as she faced Quinn fully armed.

Quinn stepped right, and Rachel adjusted herself with a step to her own right. They circled each other slowly. Rachel watched warily, eyes narrowed, as Quinn spun the shovel in lazy circles. The slow movement was belied by the tension in her shoulders and in her jaw.

Rachel waited, and watched, still keeping up to Quinn step for step.

When Quinn swung again, a solid two-handed slash aimed at Rachel’s ribs, a tic in her jaw gave it away, and Rachel was already moving forward, into Quinn’s zone, before the swing even began. She lifted her two-headed axe, aiming downwards at Quinn’s collarbone with vicious force. Quinn got the shovel up in time, recovering from her previous swing, but Rachel was already coming in with a harsh kick to Quinn’s stomach, and she went tumbling back.

Quinn recovered quickly, and Rachel held her ground, axe at the ready, as Quinn came in again, this time holding the shovel with her hands spread widely. Once she was within range, Quinn attacked, a series of short-range smacks raining down on Rachel from both the hard handle and the sharp head of the shovel. Rachel buckled under the pressure, trying to step away, but Quinn followed. So close, Rachel could feel Quinn’s harsh breath tickle her skin even as she saw it misting the cool air, and she could see every drop of sweat building on Quinn’s brow, clinging to her hair. It was too close to make good use of her axe, and after a few failed attempts to block Quinn’s blows with it, Rachel tossed it aside, drawing her stake once again from her belt.

Quinn withdrew once the stake was in play, pulling back a few steps. Rachel took the chance to catch her breath, wincing as each inhale stretched her sore sides. Okay, Rachel , she told herself. Keep it together .

She raised her stake, intent on rushing in for take two, but looking at Quinn standing protectively between her and the Master’s bones, she faltered. She had to try one more time. “I know what it feels like to love someone, Quinn,” she said, keeping her stake raised but reaching one hand out in a gesture of peace. “To love someone so much your whole heart aches, and your head sings, and you’d do just about anything to keep them safe. I know what you’re feeling.”

Quinn scowled. “Would you shut up about your feelings? I don’t care, Slayer. No one cares, okay? God, you are so stupid. ” There was a kind of brittle hardness in her eyes. Rachel thought she must have struck a nerve.

“I’m just trying to understand, Quinn,” she pressed, softly, hoping for more. She could break that hardness.

Quinn snarled, baring her teeth, and came at her with her weapon raised. “She -- is -- my -- sire, ” she yelled between blows. One hit caught Rachel in the stomach, right where Brittany had got her earlier, and she went down, gasping. Quinn continued to rain blows down on her, harder and harder. Rachel curled into a ball to protect herself, covering her head with her arms, but she could still hear Quinn through it. “She raised me up from nothing, from being a nobody like you and all your stupid loser friends! She gave me my revenge! She made me who I am, and I owe her everything, and I hated her more than I have ever hated anybody in the end but she is my sire . There’s no way you can understand that,” Quinn said.

The blows halted, and Rachel unrolled herself, wiping at her eyes with one hand, her face screwed up in pain. When her vision cleared, she saw Quinn standing over her. The shovel was held loosely in one hand. Rachel tracked the slow path of a drop of her own blood down its silver head.

“How did you kill her?” Quinn asked. Her voice was flat and her eyes were full of a terrible wrath. Rachel wondered, for a brief second, if it was directed at Quinn herself almost as much as at Rachel.

A hacking cough bubbled up in Rachel’s throat, and she spat up a bit of blood. She stared at it dully, staining the sleeve of her sweater. Slowly, between shallow breaths, she said, “Sue killed me. She killed me. But I’m – I’m the best fighter in the world, Quinn. I’m the fastest, I’m the strongest, I’m the smartest, and I got that damn ring of hers off of her e—even as she was choking every last drop of air out of my body.”

Quinn was panting, a hungry look on her face. “And then?” she said. “You were dead. How – how –“

“I came back,” Rachel laughed, and a little more blood came up. She spat it carefully to the side to avoid further damage to her sweater. “There’s a kind of irony there reminiscent of the works of Sondheim or, or Shaw, don’t you think? I came back, and I killed her.”

Quinn laughed too, a low, ragged sound, and she sagged against the shovel. Rachel’s head bowed down to the ground under its own weight, and she had to struggle to raise it when Quinn began to speak.

“She told me -- she told me Slayers were strong,” Quinn said. Her face was unreadable. “I thought she was right, when I first met you. But now... you’re not. Just look at you. You really are nothing.” She tossed the shovel aside. “You’re not worth my time.”

Quinn turned her back on Rachel, apparently done with her. Rachel pressed a hand to her side, gasping, but her eyes were narrowed with anger and determination.

If there was one thing Rachel knew, it was that she was not nothing. She might not have known how to talk to strangers, or, hell, even people she’d known for years, without making them back away with an awkward laugh, and she might have broken all the speakers in her house the previous week playing a mashed-recording of her own vocals with Aaron Tveit’s at real-life-concert volume, but those were just one-off mistakes. She was, in the long run and where it counted, better than that, and she was better than this. Better than Quinn could possibly know.

With that thought, she began to haul herself up, biceps screaming as she pushed herself up to a kneeling position. From there, it was just a matter of getting her feet under herself properly and getting back into the fight. Easier said than done, though; she’d taken a number of hits to her legs while Quinn had been taking her anger out on her, and they ached almost as much as her ribs did with every slow movement as she dragged herself to her feet.

Finally, Rachel was upright, standing on admittedly shaky legs, but standing nonetheless -- which was really something of an achievement, given the circumstances, and Rachel would’ve patted herself on the back if she’d had a moment but now really wasn’t the best time. She adjusted the hem of her sweater slowly, then fixed her headband, which had gone lopsided in the beating.

Rachel took a single, deep breath, deep enough to make her sore ribs ache even more, then threw herself at Quinn.

They hit the ground heavily, Quinn taking the brunt of the impact with a groan of pain. Before she could recover, Rachel had her, pinning Quinn’s thighs with her knees and her hands above her head with one of her own hands. Rachel’s other hand wound itself into Quinn’s ponytail, gripping the silky strands tightly then slamming Quinn’s head into the ground again, once, twice, three times.

Rachel was a firm believer in what other people called “overkill.” Really, though, she just liked to do her job well. A job well done was a job that didn’t need repeating, and repetition was only acceptable if it was for an encore.

Rachel slammed her knee into Quinn’s stomach with all the force she could muster, then got to her feet, leaving the vampire gasping and disoriented on the ground. She took a few cautionary steps backwards, but Quinn didn’t move, or even seem to notice really. Perhaps Rachel had used a little more force than was necessary on the head-slams.

The harsh sound of her own panting breath, and Quinn’s low whimpers, filled Rachel’s ears, but they faded to a dull thrum as she staggered over to the shovel Quinn had abandoned. She was beaten, bruised, and she was fairly sure her lip was bleeding, although she’d stopped coughing up blood, thank goodness -- but none of that mattered. Nothing mattered but the solid weight of the shovel in her hand and the bones staring at her defiantly, only a few feet away.

Slowly, so slowly, Rachel entered the circle.

They were just bones. Just chalky old bones. A vampire as old as Sue -- she was too powerful to dust. She left behind something of herself, so others could bring her back. Undo Rachel’s work. Force her to face Sue again, to repeat herself. Bring that hand back around her neck, tightening, tightening. Kill her again.

It’d be a cold day in hell before Rachel allowed that to happen.

She lifted the shovel, gripping it with both hands like a baseball bat. Vaguely, as if from a distance, she recalled the previous summer, Tina teaching her and Mercedes how to play softball because she was too shy to join the local league alone.

Behind her, Quinn had pulled herself together enough to say, in a voice that shook weakly, “Slayer, don’t you even think about --”

Rachel swung. The shovel cut cleanly through the air, and smashed through the skull, shattering it.

A cloud of dust went up. Rachel liked that a lot. She could dust the Master, after all.

“Slayer --”

She swung again.

“Stop it, stop it, stop it!” Quinn yelled. She sounded like she was crying. “Sla-- Rachel! Rachel, stop it, stop it --”

Again. Again. Harder and harder, until the shovel was a metallic blur in her hands and dust covered her knee socks thickly, sticking to the blood and gore. Until the bones were all gone, and then she stopped, panting for breath. Her eyes stung, but whether it was from the dust or from the emotional turmoil bubbling beneath the surface within her in true heroine fashion, Rachel couldn’t say.

A shuffling sound came from behind her. Leaning heavily on the shovel handle, Rachel turned to face Quinn, who was getting to her feet with a grimace of pain. Her face was wet with tears that shone dully in the bright lights that surrounded the football field. There was a murderous look in her eyes, and Rachel winced. “If you’re going to try to kill me,” she said, quietly, “please just... I understand if you want to try and make it as violent as possible, but please, avoid my nose. Whether I survive the attempt or not, it wouldn’t do to ruin my most recognizable and distinguishing feature.”

Quinn shook her head wordlessly. Seeing that no response was forthcoming, Rachel continued. “But -- you don’t have to, Quinn. It’s over now. There’s nothing left for you in Lima now, you can take Santana and Brittany and you can all leave us in peace. We don’t have to fight, Quinn.”

“It’s not over, Slayer,” Quinn said, her voice hoarse and her eyes burning as they glared narrowly at Rachel. “Next time, things will be different.” Then she turned and limped off the field.

Rachel considered following her, finishing the job once and for all and ridding the world of Quinn. She’d killed those Cheerios. She and Santana and Brittany would have killed more than a hundred people that night if she hadn’t stopped them. They deserved to be dust. But Rachel couldn’t stop thinking of the way Quinn had cried, of her desperation to bring back her mentor, of the numbness in her eyes after Santana and Brittany ditched her.

Her dads had always told her she had too soft a heart for this job. They said it like a compliment, and Rachel took pride in that fact. For once she wondered if maybe it would have consequences, but she couldn’t bring herself to chase Quinn down. Quinn was -- Quinn and Santana and Brittany, they were too human to slay.

Rachel watched Quinn’s back disappear into the night, clutching the handle of the shovel so tightly her knuckles went white. The moment Quinn was gone her lower lip trembled, weakened. Tears stung at the corners of her eyes. Rachel wiped them away with a shaking hand that was sprinkled in a light layer of dust.

Quinn was wrong. It was over.


	4. Chapter 4

 

_Epilogue: Saturday_

When Quinn finally worked up the courage to return to the tomb, she was expecting to find Santana and Brittany long gone, leaving nothing but dust and grave dirt behind them. There’d be a kind of poetry to it: the sire abandoned and left to die while her protégés went off and did their own thing without a second thought to her fate.

God, she hated her life.

Quinn pushed open the door with hands that shook from exhaustion. She hadn’t eaten. She hadn’t slept. She’d spent the whole night wandering Lima listlessly, not knowing who or what she was looking for but with a sense of looking for  _ something. _ Direction, maybe. Without her sire or her brethren, there was nothing left for her. She might as well go back to turning children in a desperate attempt to wipe out what her parents had done to her. But, no, she’d been done with that a long time ago, before she’d even met Brittany, or Santana. Before the fights, before The Fight, before she’d left. Before her sire had died, and she hadn’t even known because she’d been off gallivanting around the world with her girls, drinking the finest blood and partying every night.

Just because she was totally, horribly alone was no reason to fall back on old habits.

Suddenly, her ears caught the tiniest sound of stirring from the next tomb over. Movement, and then quiet voices. The shuffling of feet. Then Brittany and Santana poked their heads into the door with matching looks on their faces, part sheepish and part defiant. And, in Brittany’s case, part crazy, but that was par for the course.

“Q? You okay?” Santana said, searching her face. “You don’t look so hot.”

Quinn smiled weakly, unable to help how it wobbled. “I thought -- I would have thought you’d have left by now.”

Santana scowled, crossing her arms. “Give us some credit, Quinn. Not all of us ditch our sires, you know. You’re just some kind of special.”

Quinn reeled back as if slapped, hurt and anger and pain burning through her. The feeble smile she’d been maintaining broke entirely, and with it the seal she’d been keeping on her emotions. She covered her mouth with one hand to keep silent, and cried like a little girl.

In an instant, Brittany and Santana were at her side, wrapping their arms around her and nuzzling at her hair comfortingly. Quinn felt Santana’s lips press to her temple, and then Santana was murmuring into her ear, “God, Quinn, I’m sorry, I don’t know why I say the crap I say sometimes --”

“I’m sorry too,” Quinn said brokenly, clutching them to her with all her strength.

Brittany stroked Quinn’s hair gently, combing through her destroyed ponytail with her fingertips. “I’m not sorry,” she said, “because I’m pretty sure I didn’t do anything wrong. But I’m super happy you guys are finally trying the whole emotional honesty thing. It’ll totally make you more zenith, you know?”

“Brittany,” Quinn sighed, rubbing her face into her shoulder, “I seriously have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“It’s like the tides,” Brittany said, like that explained everything. Quinn giggled helplessly, and the other two joined in.

For a solid minute, they stayed there, holding each other, then Santana broke away with a grin. “You know what you need, Q?” she said.

“Rachel Berry’s head on a pike?” Quinn said. She’d meant it, when she told Rachel they weren’t finished. Maybe Quinn’s sire was totally and completely out of her reach now, but revenge sure wasn’t. Quinn had some major scheming to do.

“No. Well, maybe,” Santana conceded with a smirk. “But I was thinking more instant gratification than that.”

Quinn rolled her eyes. “Santana, I swear to God, if you suggest a threesome one more time --”

“No, Q,  _not_ a threesome,” Santana said, with an answering eyeroll.

“Yeah, the last thing you need right now is a complicated dynamite shift between us,” Brittany agreed, utterly serious. “You’re in a fragile state, and we respect that and stuff.”

“ _ Dynamic _ , Britt-Britt, not dynamite,” Santana said. She breezed on: “What you need is a manicure, a facial, a haircut, and a  _ Dirty Dancing _ rewatch. We’ll catch a few winks now, and then tonight we’ll rob us a spa, break into whatever passes for a five-star motel in this dump of a town, and take an evening to just, you know, be girls for once.”

Quinn smiled helplessly, and squeezed her girls to her even tighter.

Meanwhile, halfway across the city of Lima, Rachel stood on her porch, staring out into the night sky. She shivered in the cold air, but she smiled slightly.

Suddenly, from behind her came the thud of heavy footsteps. She turned, wincing a little as it pulled at still-sore muscles, and dropped her defensive stance as soon as she identified her visitor.

“Hey, Rachel,” Finn said, with that dopey smile she loved so much. Rachel struggled to return it, but found she couldn’t. Kurt’s words from their conversation only a few days prior were burned in her brain, and now that the distraction that was Sue Sylvester’s potential rise from death was gone, and now that he was here, with his friendly grin and his unnatural (but incredibly attractive) height, she couldn’t seem to get them out of her head.

Finn’s smile faded a little, turned cold, and that still hurt despite her misgivings. She pulled a grin up, and though it was weak, it seemed to satisfy him. He grinned down at her with a twinkle in his eye, then bent down for a light, easy kiss. When he pulled back, he said, “You know, Rachel, I was pretty impressed with how you handled this whole thing. I know the clue I gave you wasn’t super obvious, so the way you put it all together, it was like Sherlock Holmes or something. Or like Inspector Gadget.”

She wanted to smile, to thank him, to take him by his mildly-scruffy chin and kiss him again, but she was stuck on his first sentence. “You were... you were impressed? But, no, wait --” she paused, shaking her head to clear it. Eventually, she grabbed him by the shoulders and held him as she said, enunciating each word slowly and clearly to show how important it was to her, “Finn, I want you to answer me one question, and to do it without lying or stalling or using sports metaphors, because you know very well that I can’t follow those.”

“Anything,” Finn said. He looked adorably bewildered, and Rachel almost chose not to ask him after all. But she refused to be made a fool of, and if her doubts were true then that would be true and just -- no. Rachel Berry was no fool, and if she was then that needed to be fixed.

“Finn, were you there last night? At the football field?”

Finn paused, then his shoulders slouched down. “Rachel --”

“Were you there, Finn?” Rachel demanded, eyes wide and hurt. She couldn’t believe it, she couldn’t  _believe_ it. “Did you -- did you stand by and watch while Quinn was threatening those people? While she was beating me into the ground. I mean, I beat her and I won, and of course I _knew_ I was going to, but if you could stand there and watch that happen and do _nothing_ , then clearly y-you don’t love me as much as you’ve always said you do.”

Finn glanced around awkwardly. “Come on, Rachel, it’s really not that big a deal. I  _ do _ love you. Come on, don’t make this into some huge thing. This isn’t one of those soap operas you watch.”

“But it is a big deal, Finn! And the fact that you don’t understand that, it says a lot to me about you,” Rachel said.

“That’s ridiculous,” Finn said. “I’m not perfect, okay? Cut me a break, Rachel.”

Rachel sighed heavily, lowering her head to stare at her feet. “I thought you were, though, Finn.” She shivered. “I guess I was wrong.”

“ _ No one _ is perfect, Rachel,” Finn snapped. “Not even you. So don’t try and make me feel guilty about this.”

Rachel knew she wasn’t perfect. She’d always known that. She was too mean and too honest and too selfish to be perfect. But at least she  _ tried _ . So she lifted her head, forced a smile, and said, “I’m not going to. I’m going to -- to call my friends out here, and we’re going to celebrate the final and ultimate death of the most dangerous enemy I have ever fought. Then we’re going to go inside, and we’re going to sing and watch movies and I’m going to feel good about myself. Without you. And maybe tomorrow I’ll think about this, you, again, but not until then.” Wrapping her arms around herself, she turned away from him. “Good night, Finn.”

She didn’t hear him leave, but when she turned around a minute later he was gone. She hadn’t asked him about Blaine. She had a feeling she knew the answer.

Suddenly, there was a knock at the sliding door behind her. She spun, and her face broke into a weak smile when she saw Kurt and Mercedes. Mercedes had a canvas bag in one hand and a copy of  _Dirty Dancing_ in the other, and Kurt was waving at her cheerily. They pushed the door open and stepped out onto the porch to join her. 

“Got tired of waiting inside?” Rachel said, and she stepped right up to them and wrapped her arms around both of them. They both hesitated for a moment, then wrapped their arms around her warmly.

“Good to see you too, Rachel,” Mercedes said into her hair. “Really, really good. I was a little worried out there last night, not gonna lie.”

“Me too,” Rachel confessed as she pulled away. She turned away, wiping at her eyes in as discreet a manner as possible. “Have you, uh, have you got the bones?”

“What’s left of them,” Kurt said. “You really smashed the hell out of them, Rachel. I’m impressed.”

Rachel giggled. Straightening herself out, she turned back to her friends and said, “So, shall we start, then?”

Mercedes up-ended the bag, and bone splinters and dust spilled to the floor. Then she moved back, and allowed Kurt to take the floor. He knelt down next to them, careful not to dirty his pants, and began to murmur, “ _Eam spiritus purgationis…”_

Mercedes wrapped an arm around Rachel’s shoulders, and they stared into the fire that sprouted from Kurt’s fingers and fell to envelope all that was left of Sue Sylvester. It burned brightly -- almost too brightly, and in the flames there were hints of green and blue that shouldn’t have been there.

“Won’t the neighbors notice?” Mercedes asked Rachel.

“Don’t worry about it. They’ll just assume we’re doing another family re-enactment of Sweeney Todd.”

Kurt snickered, then admonished her, “Don’t make me laugh. I’ll forget my place. Then who knows what would happen? Maybe we’d end up with an army of re-animated Sue bones parading around.”

_ “ _ Shutting up now,” Rachel said. Mercedes mimed zipping her lips with a cheeky grin.

“Good,” Kurt said, with a cautionary glare at both of them. “ _ Purgare quod erat hic...” _

He chanted for a good minute, then the fire hissed violently and vanished, leaving behind nothing but ash. The bone fragments and dust from the football field were gone.

“And that’s that,” Kurt said with a thin, satisfied smile.

“She is never, ever gonna bother you again,” Mercedes said. She wrapped an arm around Rachel’s shoulders. “So, now that we’ve fried her bacon, what say we head back inside, paint our toenails, sing a few songs on that sweet karaoke machine of yours, then pop some popcorn and throw in  _ Dirty Dancing _ ? We were talking to your dads a few minutes ago, and they’ve agreed to make tonight date night so we can have the house to ourselves.”

“I’m always down for Patrick Swayze’s hips,” Kurt said, and he and Mercedes high-fived.

Rachel giggled. Then, grinning mischievously, she teased, “I guess we could do that, but I really should review the tapes from last night  --”

“Oh, come  _ on, _ Rachel!” Mercedes said. “You worked your ass off this week, and you deserve a break. You can always watch the tape tomorrow.  _ Dirty Dancing _ , on the other hand, waits for nothing and no one.”

“Or at least,  _ we _ don’t,” Kurt said, linking his arm with hers.

“Oh, fine, I guess --”

Arm-in-arm and squabbling as always, they headed inside, leaving the ash to cool on the porch and drift away on the wind, no longer a threat to anyone or anything.

 

 


End file.
